English abstract
Sustainable development lies at the heart of Oman Vision 2040(Oman vision 2040,
2019). Although the economic; and human aspects of sustainable developments are
the main focus of the future direction of the country, the role of the built environment
as a key component of the Omani sustainable development agenda has been recently
acknowledged by the government. However, the development in this area is rather
slow when compared to other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries who have
already introduced sustainability rating systems for buildings such as Pearl Rating
System Tool in Abu Dhabi and Qatar Sustainability Assessment System. Most of these
systems were developed based on international sustainability rating systems i.e. LEED
and hence, adopted a top-down approach where the inspiration and cultural values of
the wider community might have been insufficiently considered.
In spite of the tendency towards a sustainable built environment in Oman, there has
been a lack of clear understanding of sustainability in a way that reflects Omani
people's aspirations, values, preferences and priorities. Equally important, earlier
endeavours in this field did not investigate sustainability components in the built
environment as perceived by stakeholders, including end-users and decision makers,
in Oman. This forms a major obstacle in the way of developing a local building
sustainability rating system. Therefore, the aim of this study is to elicit the Omani
stakeholder's perception of a sustainable built environment and identify sustainability
components as perceived by the Omani stakeholders. In addition, the study explores
the existence of differences among stakeholder groups in sustainability knowledge
based on socio-demographic factors such as gender, age, education level, influence
level, background and previous experience in sustainable projects.
The study adopted the social constructionism theory as an overarching approach and
hence, employed identification and mapping, elicitation, and consensus development
methods in a three-step data collection process. The first step involved stakeholder
identification and mapping using the power-vs-interest matrix technique. This technique allowed the researcher to identify and classify stakeholder groups into four
categories namely, crowd, subjects, context setters and players. This was followed by
an exhaustive freelisting exercise with a sample of 116 stakeholders who covered the
four categories outlined in the previous step. An effort was made to balance the sample
across stakeholder's categories and socio-demographic factors. The cut-off in sample
size was based on the notion of saturation point upon which no new terms are added
by any further addition to the sample size. After the freelisting data is filtered for
inconsistency and repetition following the method's protocol, the data was used to
calculate the Salience Index for each elicited unique term. The last step in the data
collection process involved a Pile sorting workshop during which representatives of
stakeholder groups worked collaboratively to develop consensus in order to categorize
the terms that were elicited in the previous stage. The data were analysed statistically
and inferentially using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).
The results showed that the most salient terms for Omanis are Green Area followed
by Natural Ventilation and Using Solar Energy. It was also found that out of the 234
unique terms elicited, there are 27 terms that formed the core components of
sustainability in the built environment as perceived by Omanis i.e. most salient terms.
These terms are consensually categorized into four categories by the stakeholder
representatives during an interactive pile sorting workshop. These categories were
given titles based on the terms classified under each category by the stakeholder
representatives themselves: Materials and Construction, Social Requirements,
Efficient Design, and Cost Optimization. Therefore, it was concluded that the four
groups and the 27 terms represent potential structure -i.e. categories and their
indicators- for the development of an Oman-specific sustainability rating system.
Moreover, the inferential statistical analysis carried out (Mann-Whitney U test and the
Kruskale Wallis test) showed that some of the socio-demographic factors are
associated with differences in sustainability knowledge. In particular, gender,
education and stakeholder groups were found to have a significant effect on
sustainability knowledge among stakeholders. However, the analyses showed that
there were no significant differences in sustainability knowledge based on
stakeholders influence level (crowd, subjects, context setters and players), which in
turn suggests that those who have the power to change and influence do not necessarily
have better knowledge about sustainability.
Therefore, this thesis calls for immediate action to start a large-scale programmer to
promote sustainability knowledge and practices among all built environment
stakeholder groups including policymakers. Equally important, the thesis provides an
evidence-based structure to develop a local building sustainability rating system based
on Omani stakeholder's collective perception, values and aspirations.
