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The Evolving Nature (or Not) of Sustainability Communications in New Home Building in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Georgia Warren-Myers

    (Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia)

  • Monique Schmidt

    (Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia)

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that sustainable homes can help mitigate the impact of climate change and assist with meeting international climate targets. However, market implementation has been slow due to limited regulatory regimes and poor engagement by home builders across Australia. In Australia, homes are commonly built by ‘volume home builders’ (VHBs), who are defined as home builders who build large quantities of homes, generally from a standardised set of plans and formats. The Housing Institute of Australia (HIA) ranks the largest volume home builders annually in their top 100 home builders report. To evaluate the VHBs’ approach to communicating sustainability in their home products, this study used content analysis techniques to investigate their use of online communication channels (websites, blogs and social media accounts). This study examined 23 New South Wales VHBs in 2020 and 2022 and compared them to a study of Australia’s top 100 VHBs in 2016. The findings demonstrated a significant increase in the level of sustainability communications in their online channels between 2016 and 2020 but showed a decrease between 2020 and 2022. Overall, the level of detail, the type of information and the educational quality improved from 2016 to 2022. However, only two VHBs provided a high level of sustainability information. The most recent results illustrated that VHBs have moved away from having sustainability links and terminology on their websites compared to the 2020 baseline. This study demonstrated that leading Australian VHBs have an enormous opportunity to improve their sustainability messaging and suggested recommendations for enhancing communication capabilities and providing more meaningful sustainability information.

Suggested Citation

  • Georgia Warren-Myers & Monique Schmidt, 2023. "The Evolving Nature (or Not) of Sustainability Communications in New Home Building in Australia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-20, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:19:p:14372-:d:1250900
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Trivess Moore & Andréanne Doyon, 2018. "The Uncommon Nightingale: Sustainable Housing Innovation in Australia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-18, September.
    2. Georgia Warren-Myers & Christopher Heywood, 2018. "A New Demand-Supply Model to Enable Sustainability in New Australian Housing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-18, January.
    3. Moore, Trivess & Berry, Stephen & Ambrose, Michael, 2019. "Aiming for mediocrity: The case of australian housing thermal performance," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 602-610.
    4. S. E. Robertson & K. Sparck Jones, 1976. "Relevance weighting of search terms," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 27(3), pages 129-146, May.
    5. Fuerst, Franz & Warren-Myers, Georgia, 2018. "Does voluntary disclosure create a green lemon problem? Energy-efficiency ratings and house prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 1-12.
    6. Warren-Myers, Georgia & Bartak, Erika & Cradduck, Lucy, 2020. "Observing energy rating stars through the Australian Consumer Law lens: How volume home builders’ advertising can fail consumers," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
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