Modeling relationship between success factors (policies) and critical success criteria (goals) for sustainable housing in developing countries

Abstract

Policymakers worldwide seek to adopt sustainable housing strategies/policies to achieve sustainable development in cities and beyond. Securing such policies is more exigent in most developing economies especially in sub-Saharan Africa, considering rampant urbanization, frequent power outages, the housing unaffordability crisis and a proliferation of slum in cities. However, empirical studies on investigating the impact of policies on goals for sustainable housing are sparse. This study models the relationship between success factors and critical success criteria for sustainable housing development in Ghanaian cities. A positivist philosophical stance and deductive reasoning were adopted to conduct deterministic modelling of primary questionnaire data collected via a cross-sectional time horizon. Questionnaire data was garnered from respondents employed by regulated institutions responsible for the Ghanaian housing market. Subsequent analysis utilized partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings revealed that ‘developers enabling’ factors and ‘mixed-use development’ factors had significant impacts on sustainable housing. ‘Household-enabling’ factors, though not significant, have high performance/index value on sustainable housing. Aside their insignificant impact, land-use planning factors had low-performance value. Essentially, while pointing out the crucial factors for sustainable housing, the findings also caution policymakers on possible counterproductive policies and serve to engender wider polemic debate and discussion.