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This paper develops a simulation model for analyzing how government incentives and punishments improve contractors' participation in resource utilization of construction and demolition waste (RUCDW) based on system dynamics theory. The construction industry's long-term objective is to become more sustainable and resource-effective, and as part of this objective, generated construction and demolition waste should be recycled and resource utilized. However, most contractors have little willingness to engage in RUCDW because it increases their costs. The government thus plays a vital role in improving their participation in RUCDW through a range of educational tools such as advertisements, professional training, incentives, and punishments. Among these approaches, incentives and punishments are considered the most effective because they directly change project costs. We use the Vensim software package for numerical simulation and data collected from Suzhou, China are used to demonstrate and validate the developed model. Simulation results show that the government can improve contractors' participation in RUCDW through three kinds of incentives and punishments: (1) subsidizing RUCDW; (2) increasing landfill fees; and 3) issuing fines for illegal dumping. Comprehensive application of multiple policies has a stronger effect than single policies. The established model is therefore a valuable tool for assessing the dynamic effects of government incentives and punishments on RUCDW ahead of implementation, which can provide guidance for policymakers., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

The behavior of construction workers has a significant impact on the overall safety climate of a project. The purpose of this paper is to figure out the evolutionary pattern of workers' unsafe behavior and to minimize its occurrence. We constructed a two-sided evolutionary game model consisting of workers and managers to explore the focal point of interest, strategy equilibrium conditions, and behavior evolution process. The experimental results of stability analysis and system dynamics show that there are two stable states in all four cases, (Safe behavior, Negative management) as well as (Unsafe behavior, Negative management). The lower the initial willingness of workers to behave unsafely, the faster they reach a safe steady state. By contrast, managers' strategy choices have a certain lag. Workers are discouraged from choosing unsafe behavior under both the positive incentive of raising bonuses and the negative incentive of raising fines. And the sensitivity of the two incentives is similar. For indirect effect risk loss, when it is effectively controlled during safe construction, workers quickly gravitate toward safe behavior. These findings provide a reference for construction safety management. Several practical suggestions were proposed from three perspectives: the worker, the manager, and the site safety climate, focus on the theme of reducing unsafe behavior and achieving a virtuous cycle of safety climate., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Huang, Wu, Han, Yin, Gao and Chen.)

The construction industry across the world is characterized by a high safety risk, and the occurrence of these safety accidents has led to substantial economic and social losses. The workers' unsafe behaviors are considered to be a main cause. Thus, recently, scholars in the construction industry have shifted their attention to the investigation of the influencing factors (or antecedents) and their impact on workers' safety behaviors (WSBs), hoping to provide insight into useful management policies. The existing literature has identified many society-level, cooperation-level, project-level, and individual-level concepts influencing WSB, but ignores the influence of intra-group informal interaction (IGII) on WSB. This study constructed a conceptual model for IGII, group knowledge sharing (GKS), and group identification (GI) to determine their influence on construction workers' safety behaviors, and then conducted simulation analysis using the software of NetLogo. The results show that IGII, GKS, and GI can positively influence workers' safety behaviors, and IGII can also positively influence WSB through GKS and GI. This study enriches the theoretical knowledge on the causation of construction workers' safety behaviors, provides references for project managers to carry out proper safety management, and offers a theoretic foundation for the formulation of industry regulations.

The construction industry in China is characterized by higher safety risk, and construction workers' unsafe behaviors are one of the main causes of construction safety accidents, thus, designing scientific mechanisms that motivate and cultivate the construction workers to adopt safety behaviors becomes the key to the construction safety problem. Existing studies have examined some of the factors leading to workers' safety behavior (WSB) at the social, organizational, and individual levels, but ignore investigating the impact of co-workers' guanxi (CWG) on WSB. Thus, this research utilized exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling to examine the impact of CWG on WSB, and the mediating role of group identification (GI) in the relationship between CWG and WSB. Results show that CWG can directly or indirectly influence WSB, GI can exert a partial mediating effect on the relationship between CWG and GI. The research results enrich the research on c guanxi and causation of WSB, and provide a reference for project managers to carry out relationship-related safety management and industry regulations., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Chen, Gong, Li and Shi.)

Railway engineering generates large amounts of construction and demolition waste (CDW). To quantify the amount of CDW generated from railway engineering projects throughout the whole life cycle, a process-based life cycle assessment model is proposed in this paper. The life-cycle CDW is divided into four parts: CDW from off-site transportation of construction materials (OSTCM), CDW from site operation wastage of construction materials (SOWCM), discard ballast from roadbeds, stationyard, bridges and tunnels (DB), and CDW from reparation and renewal of aging components (RRAC). Yun-Gui Railway is selected as a case study to validate the developed model, and an uncertainty analysis is conducted with Oracle Crystal Ball software. The results show that between 175 and 311 million tons of CDW is generated throughout the whole life cycle of Yun-Gui Railway. DB is the largest component of the life-cycle CDW from railway engineering projects. This indicates the negative environmental impacts of railway construction can be significantly mitigated by optimizing the location of ballast disposal sites and developing suitable landfill proposals. Also, the CDW generated by wastage of construction materials during off-site construction and site operation is important in waste management in railway engineering projects, in which rubble, sand, and cement have the high potential for waste reduction. Findings from this study can contribute to the knowledge body as well as the engineering practice in green railways., Competing Interests: All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Jianling Huang et al.)

Given their occupation's inherent income instability, the promotion of endowment insurance among construction workers is essential. This research reports the barriers and facilitators involved in promoting endowment insurance to construction workers, by contextualizing it in China. It adopts a qualitative research approach combining semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis. It is discovered that the barriers include (1) construction workers' low willingness to participate in insurance, caused by the low level of awareness and understanding of the benefits of endowment insurance, low income, unstable employment situation, and lack of trust in the insurance system, (2) companies' irresponsibility, caused by cost pressure, lack of policy support, uncertain legal responsibilities, and (3) governments' incomplete management, caused by insufficient funding, complex administrative procedures, weak regulation, and regional differences. A series of facilitating measures are also proposed, including (1) increasing awareness and understanding of the benefits of endowment insurance, (2) adjusting the design of the endowment insurance scheme, and (3) strengthening legislation and enforcement. This study presents an analysis of the promotion practices of endowment insurance in China's construction industry, which can provide policymakers with valuable references for optimizing the endowment insurance system. The findings can have significant implications for China and other developing countries that may face similar challenges in promoting social security programs in aging societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]