No abstract

Sustainable construction plays a major role in sustainable development. However, the investment rate in sustainable buildings has decreased in recent years. Considering that social factors are one of the important factors influencing the sustainable building development, this paper highlighted the most impactful social factors affecting the sustainable building development based on the opinions of the industry experts from Sweden. Therefore, social challenges and barriers to sustainable building development were investigated using research methods of literature review, questionnaire survey, and statistical analysis using SPSS software. Eventually, after ranking and analyzing the social barriers from the perspectives of the construction industry practitioners from Sweden, possible measures were suggested accordingly.Findings showed that the most important social factors affecting the sustainable building development in Sweden were, "poor communication and lack of common understanding and interests among designers, contractors and project stakeholders," "resistance to change from conventional to sustainable buildings' and "lack of demand for sustainable buildings," respectively. As a result, effective communication management and information sharing and use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) for enhancing communication and collaboration between stakeholders; government support; more incentives and environmental policy; in addition to more education and awareness regarding the benefits of sustainable buildings and stakeholder engagement at early stages of the project for alignment of goals and creating common understanding and interests were suggested as effective measures in reducing these barriers and for further adoption of sustainable buildings.