An empirical study of the variables affecting site planning and design in green buildings

Abstract Site planning and design (SPD) is a key issue for site sustainability in green building development. This research study explores participants’ perception of SPD in green buildings. A questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate how the participants rated the importance and difficulty of SPD-related variables and items. The Kendall concordance test and Mann–Whitney U test were used to analyse and compare the responses of participants involved directly and indirectly in SPD, where the participants were divided into Group 1 and Group 2 respectively. The results showed a good consensus between the rankings provided by the two groups. The Relative Importance Index was used to calculate the scores and rankings. The top 5 most important variables and the most difficult ones to realize, and the top 5 most important items and the most difficult ones to realize, were identified and analysed respectively. Environmental protection was regarded as the most important variable, and open space was considered as the most difficult one to achieve. The most important item was water pollution reduction, and the most difficult one was rational underground space utilisation. When considering the correlation between the importance and difficulty of the items and variables, the participants show different concerns on the most important and most difficult items while hold similar opinions on the most important and most difficult variables. The findings deepen the understanding of variables which are most important and which are most difficult to achieve in the SPD of green buildings, which helps the practitioners to implement effective SPD in green buildings.