Two decades of the evolution of China’s green building policy: insights from text mining

Green building (GB) policies are continuously being launched and adjusted in China to pursue resource conservation and emission reduction. Though reviewing the policy evolution could reveal the industry’s historical experience and strategic development concept and contribute to assessing and enhancing the policy system’s effectiveness, a comprehensive review of the whole GB policy system is still lacking in China. Consequently, this study examined the evolution of 1083 GB policies in China over the past two decades from the perspectives of policy objectives, policy content, and policy tools through text mining and content analysis, filling the research gap. Results show that GB policy objectives were gradually being quantified and formulated in greater detail, with the foci changed from innovation award and assessment to energy-saving retrofit and prefabrication. Supervision policies were primarily used among seven policy tool categories in recent years. The policy enhancement recommendations were proposed accordingly, supporting policymakers to improve the policy settings, providing real-time orientations for industrial sustainability development, and enlightening other countries to promote GBs.