Study on multi-party evolutionary game of green behaviour among construction industry practitioners considering consumer preferences

In the context of global climate governance, the green development of China's construction industry is crucial, as it is one of the three key areas of energy consumption. This paper constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model to study policy optimization strategies in terms of the stage of green buildings (GBs) and the heterogeneity of consumer preferences. The research results show that: (i) Developers' green behaviours are more responsive in price-sensitive markets, general contractors' green behaviours show more volatility in green-sensitive markets. (ii) The impact of consumer sensitivity levels on green building development is characterized by stages. In the development stage, a moderate level of green sensitivity helps to incentivize green building pioneers; in the introduction stage, there exists an optimal sensitivity interval, which depends on enterprises' innovation level; in the growth stage, it faces the trade-off between the risk of “greenwashing” and market failure. In the maturity stage, the low-to-medium level of consumer sensitivity helps the green building market develop soundly. (iii) The government plays different roles in the whole life cycle of GBs, an advocate at the development stage, an encourager at the introduction stage, a regulator at the growth stage, and a maintainer at the maturity stage, fully releasing the role of the market in the coordination of supply and demand and resource allocation. On this basis, combined with the product life cycle theory, a multi-principal synergistic promotion mechanism at different stages is proposed. It provides a policy reference for promoting green building development.