Search Results (2)

The construction sector is garnering increasing concern as an industry that generates significant pollution while suffering from a lack of adequate environmental performance evaluations. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the environmental performance of construction sector industries using the ISO 14031 standard in three dimensions: planning, using data and information, and reviewing and improving environmental performance evaluations. Using a descriptive and correlational approach, this study described and analyzed the level of implementation using a 7-point Likert scale questionnaire distributed to 1000 organizations in Saudi Arabia. The questionnaires were completed between May and December of 2018 and the results were measured against similar studies. The mean positive percentage responses were 31.36 and expressed the implementation levels of the three dimensions of environmental performance. The corresponding values for the three dimensions’ items were 33.36, 29.83, and 30.95 respectively. The minimum Kendall correlation coefficients for each item in a dimension were 0.79, 0.79, and 0.83, respectively. The maximum correlation values between an item and a dimension to which the item did not belong were 0.25. This study answers a fundamental question regarding the implementation level values of environmental performance in construction organizations based on the ISO 14031 standard model and analyzes the pairwise correlation among the descriptor variables of the model. Further studies are needed to investigate the model structure using the principle component, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. Full article

The need for organizations to evaluate their environmental practices has been recently increasing. This fact has led to the development of many approaches to appraise such practices. In this paper, a novel decision model to evaluate company’s environmental practices is proposed to improve traditional evaluation process in different facets. Firstly, different reviewers’ collectives related to the company’s activity are taken into account in the process to increase company internal efficiency and external legitimacy. Secondly, following the standard ISO 14031, two general categories of environmental performance indicators, management and operational, are considered. Thirdly, since the assumption of independence among environmental indicators is rarely verified in environmental context, an aggregation operator to bear in mind the relationship among such indicators in the evaluation results is proposed. Finally, this new model integrates quantitative and qualitative information with different scales using a multi-granular linguistic model that allows to adapt diverse evaluation scales according to appraisers’ knowledge. Full article