Scientometric review of barriers to carbon trading adoption in the construction industry

The construction industry is a significant contributor to global carbon emissions. To reduce the impact of climate change, carbon trading has become an emerging domain. The urgent requirement for construction projects to comply with relevant environmental regulations shows that carbon trading application to the construction industry is expected to aid the industry mitigate its carbon emissions. The purpose of this study is to undertake a scientometric literature review of the barriers construction industry faces in adoption of carbon trading. Scopus and Web of Science were the databases adopted. Relevant keywords aided by Boolean search operators were used. Of 342 articles retrieved, 68 were duplicates after data was subjected to Systematic Review Assistant-Deduplication Module (SRA-DM). Remaining 274 articles were screened further at title and abstract levels. Furthermore, 75 articles that lacked barriers were excluded. The main body of the remaining 199 articles were skimmed in identifying relevant articles. Only 116 articles were found to be relevant to the study. 10 documents were not accessible and hence 106 papers were used for data analysis. Content analysis was used to extract and synthesise the barriers. Scientometric analysis was undertaken using VOSViewer software. From findings, significant barriers were lack of awareness of carbon market opportunities, low prices of carbon, lack of trust by parties and high transaction costs. Keyword analyses and author analyses were the scientometric analyses undertaken. This study is significant as identification of the barriers is timely, worth researching and practical leading to strategies to mitigate them and contribute to sustainable development.