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• Key policies to promote the CDW recycling are quantitatively explored. • The stepwise regression was employed to evaluate the effect of the nine policies. • Green product label is the top policy followed by Charge and Tax and Technical Standard. • 84.6% of the sample cities employed the Charge and Tax. • The ratios were only 11.5% for Technical Standard and 7.7% for Green Product Label. There is a growing need to recycle construction and demolition waste (CDW) in order to treat the huge amount of CDW in many metropolises of China. However, the CDW recycling industry is still in its initial stage and developed unevenly across various areas of China. In spite of some qualitative discussions, the quantitative analysis of crucial policies to the development of CDW recycling industry was overlooked. Through literature review, nine influential policy instruments were identified in term of three categories, i.e. control and command policy, market-based policy and information-based policy. The stepwise regression analysis was employed to explore the relationships between the influential policies and the development level of CDW recycling industry in 52 sample Chinese cities. The results demonstrated that Green Product Label, Charge and Tax and Technical Standards had statistically significant association with the development of CDW recycling industry in sample cities. In the surveyed cities, Charge or Tax was the most common policy tool (84.6%), but Green Product Label (7.7%) and Technological standards (11.5%) were rather less frequently employed. According to the results, Green Product Label and Technical Standards should be given higher priority. In addition, landfill charge should be introduced as a fundamental impetus. These results provide directions for other cities to facilitate the development of their CDW recycling industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large scale of construction waste has significant impacts on the environment which has attracted a growing public concern in China. Despite the introduction of measures on construction waste reduction, outcomes are not always satisfactory. This paper aims to explore critical factors that influence the construction waste reduction (CWR) behavior of contractor employees. A hypothetical model was developed in the first instance by incorporating additional variables (knowledge and personal norm) into the classic theory of planned behavior (TPB) model. The extended TPB model was consequently tested via the structural equation modeling (SEM) using data collected from the Shenzhen city, which is the first national pilot city for construction waste management and comprehensive utilization in China. This study revealed that the extended TPB model has significantly improved the explanation power of CWR behavior than the classic TPB model. Results showed that contractor employees' behavior-related knowledge was the most influential factor on their CWR behavior, notably greater than subjective norm, attitude, personal norm and perceived behavioral control. These findings provide useful inputs for designing effective approaches to motivate CWR behavior of contractor employees and policy making to reduce construction waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long‐term relative humidity change in central China has been rarely studied due to the shortness of instrumental records. In this study, we developed an annually resolved tree‐ring width chronology dating back to 1727 coefficient of efficiency (CE) with Chinese pine (Pinus tabulaeformis Carr.) samples from Mt. Shiren, central China. Relative humidity of current April–July (RHAJ) was reconstructed for the region from 1801 to 2016 CE using a linear regression model, which explains 43.9% of the variance in the instrumental records from 1960 to 2016 CE. The reconstructed RHAJ revealed that there were 33 extremely dry years, accounting for 15.28% of the past 216 years. The five driest years and the corresponding anomalies were 1835 (60.05%), 1955 (60.24%), 1929 (60.50%), 1907 (60.71%), and 1801 (60.83%). In agreement with the PDSI reconstruction for Mt. Shennong and the drought/flood series in Zhengzhou, the reconstructed RHAJ captured common droughts in 1813–1814, 1847, 1876–1880, 1900, 1923–1945, 1960–1961, and wet periods in 1863–1872, 1882–1885, 1897–1898, 1954–1956, and 1983–1984. Spatial correlation analyses showed that the reconstructed RHAJ for Mt. Shiren had significant positive correlations with vapour pressure, precipitation, and relative humidity of 850 hPa around the study area, which indicates that the reconstructed RHAJ reflects regional humidity change in central China. To sum up, these results may be provide us with a better understanding of drought variation in central China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]