Voluntary programmes for building retrofits: opportunities, performance and challenges

Abstract

Around the globe governments, businesses and citizens are actively involved in voluntary programmes that seek an improved uptake of retrofits of the existing building stock. A fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is used to understand the opportunities, performance and constraints of such programmes. Building on a series of 20 voluntary programmes in Australia, the Netherlands and the United States (including a series of 101 original interviews), the analysis finds that the majority of these have not succeeded in incentivizing their participants to take meaningful action. Insights are presented into why the majority of these programmes have underperformed, and what binds together the small number of programmes that have achieved positive results.

Keywords:

• adaptation
• buildings
• climate change
• governance
• grandfathering
• resilience
• retrofit
• urban sustainability
• voluntary programmes

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the three anonymous referees of the journal for helpful comments, and the editor for support in improving an earlier version of this manuscript.

Funding

Funding for this research was from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), VENI [grant number 451-11-015].

Supplementary data

For further detailed information containing the logic underlying fsQCA and a step-by-step description of how fsQCA has been applied in this study, see the online supplemental file at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2014.959319.

Notes

1 None of the country contexts cluster together in any of the solution formulae of the fsQCA analysis (see the fourth section). This indicates that the country contexts are appropriately constant for the current study.

2 The study was started in Australia. Interview accounts from the Australian cases largely confirmed the extant theory on voluntary programmes, and pointed out that for the purpose of the current study much data are available on programme websites and in programme reports. The focus of the interviews in the Netherlands and the United States was to validate data from these sources and to fill in gaps in the data. This explains why a relatively larger number of participants per case were interviewed in Australia than in the two other countries.

3 Understanding that fsQCA may be a less well-known method to some of the readers an online supplemental file is supplied (building on Ragin, 2008; and Schneider & Wagemann, 2012). The supplemental file pays in-depth attention to the logic underlying fsQCA and provide a step-by-step description of how fsQCA has been applied in this study.

4 Step 4 in the online supplemental file gives extensive insight into the operationalization and calibration of the conditions and outcomes (the data observations).

5 For a discussion of the analysis, see Step 6 in the online supplemental file.

6 Consistency indicates how strongly the condition relates to the outcome.

7 Coverage indicates how relevant the condition is for causing the outcome.

8 For a discussion of this analysis, see Steps 7–9 in the online supplemental file.

9 For a discussion of this analysis, see Steps 7–10 in the online supplemental file.