Improving Green Performance of Construction Projects through Supply Chain Integration: the Role of Environmental Knowledge

Abstract The implementation of green supply chain integration (GSCI) to achieve green performance (GP) has been confirmed by prior research in many industries, especially manufacturing industries. Despite this fact, very limited research has been performed to investigate the effects of green integration and environmental knowledge (EK) on green performance of construction projects. Therefore, the current study was conducted to fill this gap in the literature. A framework of many hypotheses regarding interactions between green integration (i.e., supplier, internal, and customer integration), environmental knowledge, and green performance was developed and validated by data collected from 19 construction projects in Vietnam, with the support of Structural Equation Modeling. The findings show that environmental knowledge is a significant antecedent to the development of green integration strategies. Moreover, customer integration and supplier integration have direct effects on green performance, whereas internal integration has an indirect effect on green performance through supplier integration. It is surprising to see that internal integration does not have direct effects on both customer integration and green performance. Theoretically, this study is one of the first efforts in construction that develops a framework of green supply chain integration in which the roles of integration and environmental knowledge to achieve green project objectives are highlighted. Practically, our study suggests that construction firms need to accumulate environmental knowledge and develop integration within their firms before implementing green integration strategies at the supply chain level.