Collaborative relationship discovery in green building technology innovation: Evidence from patents in China's construction industry

Green building technologies (GBTs) have grown rapidly due to accelerating climate change and environmental pollution. Under the background of double carbon, innovation in GBTs have become the general trend of sustainable development in the construction industry. Inter-organizational collaboration can not only of great significance to take advantage of innovation resources of the stakeholders involved, but also has a pivotal role in reducing costs and containing associated risks. However, little research has shed light on the underlying patterns and complex mechanisms of collaborative relationships in GBTs innovation. The aim of this study is to explore the structural characteristics, evolution laws and patterns of GBTs collaborative innovation through longitudinally tracking research on China's construction industry, and in turn, reveal the complicated collaboration mechanism of stakeholders in inter-organization. Therefore, this study establishes the GBTs collaborative innovation network model via patents in DII database. Combined with social network analysis method, the temporal evolution characteristic and spatial evolution pattern of the GBTs collaborative innovation network are quantitatively revealed. The results demonstrate that GBTs collaborative innovation gradually expands with a three-stage trend in 2006–2021. State Grid Corp. China in particular exerts a significant influence and collaborative innovation among various stakeholder, such as the general contractors and research institutions becomes the dominant force. In addition, the geospatial distribution is quite different. Beijing has a central position and is continuously strengthening. In terms of spatial pattern evolution, most of the eastern regions with high breadth-high depth are not only the center of information exchange, but also the bridge for inter-provincial resource exchanges. This study enriches the existing literature on the innovation in GBTs and helps us better understand the evolutionary mechanism of GBTs collaborative innovation and provides a useful reference for stakeholders to establish relational contracts in innovation in GBTs. It is of great significance to allocate innovation resources more efficiently and promote the sustainable development of the construction industry.