IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i2p1016-d726517.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Air Quality Impact Evaluation of Modular Construction Practices in Hong Kong and Singapore

Author

Listed:
  • Riqi Zhang

    (School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK
    Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), Edinburgh EH9 3JG, UK
    Centre for Environmental Policy, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Imperial College London, London SW7 1NE, UK)

  • Yishuang Xu

    (Manchester Urban Institute, School of Environment Education and Development, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK)

Abstract

As a new approach to construction practice, modular construction allows the building to be split into modular units and prefabricates them in factories, transports the units to the site, and assembles them into the whole construction through reliable connections. Whilst it is regarded to be the future direction in the development of the construction industry, Hong Kong and Singapore, amongst many other cities, both use modular constructions in public and private constructions. There have been many evaluations of the sustainability performance of a single construction using modular constructions, but the environmental impacts of implementing modular constructions on a city scale have been rarely explored. Few scholars have studied the impact of the application of this technology on the air quality on a small regional scale. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap by comparing and analysing the modular construction policies in Hong Kong and Singapore and evaluating the impact of the policies on air quality in the two cities. By using OLS and DID analysis, we found that the air quality can be affected by modular construction, though the impact was found to be limited. The modular construction policies had a positive effect on sulphur dioxide (SO 2 ) emissions in both cities, and a negative effect on nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) and particulate matter < 10 μm (PM 10 ) emissions. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases (GHG) and ozone (O 3 ) varied between the two.

Suggested Citation

  • Riqi Zhang & Yishuang Xu, 2022. "The Air Quality Impact Evaluation of Modular Construction Practices in Hong Kong and Singapore," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-24, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:2:p:1016-:d:726517
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/2/1016/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/2/1016/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:2:p:1016-:d:726517. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.