The Influence of Message Framing on Project Managers’ Behavioral Intentions Regarding Construction Waste Reduction

Abstract

Construction waste reduction (CWR) is an important approach to tackling the environmental problems resulting from increasing construction and demolition activities. Existing studies have explored various factors influencing construction stakeholders’ behavior or behavior intention regarding CWR mainly in terms of individual traits and environmental issues. With the advancement of information society, message framing has been explored as an emerging low-cost nudge approach for promoting pro-environment behavior or behavior intention in various research fields. Yet, few studies have investigated the influence of message framing on project managers’ behavior intentions regarding CWR. This study explores the relationship between project managers’ behavior intentions regarding CWR and message framing of CWR in terms of economic benefit vs. environmental benefit and small scale vs. large scale. A questionnaire experiment with 120 randomly selected project managers was conducted in Hangzhou. Two-way ANOVA and linear regression were performed to test the hypotheses. The results show that environmental benefit information has a higher impact on project managers’ behavior intentions regarding CWR than economic benefit information, while scale framing has an insignificant influence. The findings provide an alternative approach to increasing project managers’ awareness of CWR and further improve construction waste management.

Keywords

• message framing
• project manager
• behavior intention
• construction waste reduction (CWR)
• experimental study