Paving a traceable green pathway towards sustainable construction: A fuzzy ISM-DEMATEL analysis of blockchain technology adoption barriers in construction waste management

Construction waste management (CWM) and blockchain technology (BT) are two crucial topics for sustainable production and development. As a fundamental infrastructure for artificial intelligence, BT enables real-time, reciprocal, and immutable information provision in tracing construction waste and holds a significant potential to advance CWM. However, the barriers to adopting BT in CWM and their impact on CWM practices remain unclear. Therefore, this study aims to identify BT adoption barriers in CWM, assess their criticality, and clarify their correlations through a fuzzy empirical analysis. Results show that, due to interdependence, actions on one or some of the barriers can have a closed-loop impact. The findings suggest that the government and the stakeholders have a critical influence on the further adoption of BT in CWM. This exploratory study advances sustainable construction by clarifying those BT adoption barriers and providing implications to integrate BT into CWM practices.