Diffusion of Innovation in Sustainable Building Practices and the Role of Stakeholders

The stakeholder network in a building project can influence the process of adopting sustainable building practice. Complexity of construction projects calls for integrated modes of collaboration, while the excess inertia among stakeholders resulted in sluggish adoption of sustainable design and technologies. This study examined buildings that both had and had not adopted Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and/or ENERGY STAR in the New York metropolitan area, built, or went through major renovation between 1998 and 2013. Secondary datasets from multiple sources, including a private building database company, US Green Building Council, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, were combined based on building address and used for analysis. Stakeholders involved in those projects were retrospectively identified to understand the diffusion of innovation. The analysis included a total of 205 projects and 273 organizations. Findings suggest that having an architect who had worked on ENERGY STAR project(s) increased the likelihood of adopting ENERGY STAR. However, stakeholders' previous work collaboration was not associated with the adoption of sustainable programs. The method of utilizing multiple secondary datasets was tested to contribute to the methodology of building research by enabling the accumulation of knowledge.