Fostering sustainable transition: policy mix and governance evolution of China's green building sector based on large-scale text analysis (2004–2024)

To systematically reveal the policy efforts and evolutionary logic behind China's sustainable transition in the building sector, this study conducts a large-scale text analysis of 2,945 central and local policy documents from 2004 to 2024, integrating non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) topic modeling, policy instrument coding, and multi-level governance (MLG) comparison. The findings indicate that the policy agenda for green building in China has followed a clear trajectory from “foundation-laying” (macro-planning and standard-setting) to “implementation-deepening” (certification management and process supervision), closely linked with national sustainable development strategies. The policy mix is characterized by a “regulation-dominant” approach, with mandatory instruments at its core, supplemented by organizational and capacity-building tools. Incentive-based instruments are applied periodically, while informational and system-changing instruments remain relatively underutilized. In the multi-level governance structure, the central government focuses on strategic guidance, whereas local governments exhibit significant strategic adaptation based on regional heterogeneity. This study provides empirical evidence and theoretical insights into how China utilizes dynamic policy mixes and evolving governance to foster a sustainable transition in a specific sector, offering practical implications for optimizing future policy design to better cultivate endogenous market drivers.

1 Introduction

1.1 Research background and problem formulation

In the global agenda to combat climate change, the building sector has become a critical domain for intervention as nations pursue their sustainable development goals, owing to its substantial share of 34 per cent of global energy consumption and 34 per cent of global carbon emissions (United Nations Environment Programme, 2025). Against this backdrop, green building, as an integrated solution designed to systematically mitigate the environmental impacts across a building's entire life cycle, has gained increasing strategic prominence.

It represents not only a technological alternative but has also evolved into a critical component for assessing a nation's environmental governance capabilities and commitment to sustainable development, particularly in the context of achieving Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement (World Green Building Council, 2024). For China, under the ambitious blueprint of its national “carbon peak and carbon neutrality” strategy, and compounded by multiple imperatives including energy security and enhancing the quality of new-type urbanization, the advancement of green building has been vested with unprecedented urgency and strategic importance (Xu et al., 2022; Zhou et al., 2012).

Public policy is the central driving force for translating green building from a concept into large-scale practice. To address the market failures induced by factors such as high incremental costs, information asymmetry, technological uncertainty, and the externalities of environmental benefits (Wu et al., 2019; Matisoff et al., 2016), government intervention is critical for guiding market expectations, regulating stakeholder behavior, and catalyzing technological innovation (Hu et al., 2023). Over the past two decades, the Chinese government has established a multi-level policy framework through a series of plans and regulations (Hu et al., 2023), achieving notable success in promoting the scaled development and iterative upgrading of technical standards for green buildings. For instance, the portfolio of projects awarded the green building label has grown exponentially from a non-existent base. Similarly, evaluation standards have evolved from the 1.0 era, which initially focused on “four savings and one environmental protection” (energy, land, water, and material savings, and environmental protection) (Wang et al., 2015), to the 3.0 era. This current stage emphasizes five core performance areas—“safety and durability, health and comfort, convenience of living, resource conservation, and environment livability”—and is progressively aligning with international benchmarks (Ministry of Housing Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of China, 2019; Wang, 2022). However, despite these considerable accomplishments, policy-driven implementation continues to confront numerous deep-seated challenges. Regional development is markedly imbalanced, with policy activity and practical application in the eastern coastal regions far surpassing those in the central and western areas (Shuang et al., 2024). The sustainability and actual efficacy of economic incentive mechanisms, such as fiscal subsidies, are under significant scrutiny (Hu et al., 2025). The professional competence and cognitive awareness of market entities require further enhancement. Moreover, the green retrofitting of the vast stock of existing buildings progresses at a comparatively slow pace due to immense costs and technical complexities (Liu et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2024), all of which impose higher demands on the adaptability and effectiveness of the policy system.

The academic community has conducted a series of studies on the evolution of China's green building policy, offering valuable insights into its developmental trajectory, stage-specific features, and the preliminary landscape of central-local governance. Existing research can be broadly categorized into three streams. The first stream focuses on macro-historical trajectory and periodization, delineating the policy's evolution from inception to establishment and from voluntary to mandatory frameworks by systematically reviewing key policy documents (Wu et al., 2021; He et al., 2023). The second stream comprises evaluation studies of specific policies or instruments; scholars have employed empirical methods to assess the differential impacts of fiscal subsidy policies on green technology innovation among firms with different ownership structures (Zhang et al., 2024), or have investigated the implementation challenges of mandatory standards at the local level. The third stream consists of case-based qualitative studies that, through in-depth analyses of specific cities or projects, reveal the micro-level implementation mechanisms and barriers of policy (World Resources Institute, 2017). Collectively, these studies form the foundation of our current understanding of this field.

However, the existing literature reveals significant limitations in providing an analytical framework that is comprehensive, dynamic, and possesses strong explanatory power. First, the aforementioned research largely consists of static, “snapshot” analyses, lacking a systematic quantitative investigation into how the core agenda (thematic) priorities of the policy system have dynamically shifted over a two-decade timeline (Segal and Baumgartner, 2024). Policy agendas are not static; questions concerning which themes are persistent core issues, which are emerging or declining peripheral topics, and the underlying logic driving these changes, remain to be answered (Ye et al., 2024). Second, there is an insufficient understanding of the complex interactions within the policy instrument mix. Existing analyses tend to treat different instruments in isolation, thereby failing to illuminate how various tools (e.g., regulatory, incentive-based, informational) are combined in practice, how this portfolio mix changes over time and across governance levels, and what their underlying synergistic or conflicting relationships are (Tian et al., 2024). Finally, the policy implementation process within the MLG structure is inadequately explained. How are central policy intentions transmitted, interpreted, and adaptively executed within the vast local bureaucratic system? What accounts for the significant regional disparities (east, central, and west) in policy responses and their underlying drivers? These questions regarding the process of policy implementation and variation within a MLG context require deeper investigation (Liu and Zhang, 2024).

1.2 Research objectives and core questions

To address the aforementioned research gaps, the primary objective of this study is to systematically analyze the large-scale, multi-level corpus of China's green building policy texts from 2004 to 2024. This analysis aims to precisely delineate and thoroughly explain the dynamic evolution of the nation's policy agenda, instrument choice, and governance structure in this domain.

To achieve this objective, the study will focus on answering the following four interconnected core research questions (RQs):

(1) RQ1 (Thematic evolution): Over the past two decades, what have been the evolutionary characteristics of the core agenda (themes) within China's green building policy? Which themes can be identified as emerging, declining, or persistent?

(2) RQ2 (Instrument mix): What types of policy instruments have been predominantly employed in China's green building policy? How has the composition of the policy mix varied across different time periods and between governmental levels (central vs. local)?

(3) RQ3 (Governance and variation): How are the policy agenda and instrument choices formulated at the central level transmitted to and adapted by local authorities? What are the primary differences in policy response among China's diverse regions (eastern, central, and western), and how do these variations reflect the dynamic processes of MLG?

(4) RQ4 (Integrated insights): From an integrated perspective encompassing themes, instruments, and MLG, what are the salient features of the overall evolution of China's green building policy? What implications do these features hold for understanding China's governance model within specific technological policy domains?

1.3 Theoretical perspective and analytical framework

To systematically address the foregoing research questions, this study constructs an analytical framework centered on MLG and supplemented by the dimension of Policy Instruments. This framework is designed to reveal the complex interactions between policy content and governance structure, while incorporating temporal evolution as a key objective analytical dimension.

1.3.1 Core framework: multi-level governance and central-local interactions

China's green building policy is, in essence, a complex system operating within a MLG framework, at the core of which lies the vertical interaction between the central and local governments (Hu et al., 2023). This study adopts principal-agent theory (PAT) as the fundamental lens through which to analyze this relationship (Wang and Pan, 2023). Within this framework, the central government acts as the “principal”, responsible for setting national strategic objectives and formulating macroeconomic policies and core standards. Local governments, in turn, function as “agents”, entrusted with the implementation of these policies within their respective jurisdictions. However, the classic principal-agent model does not fully account for the complexities of China's practices. Due to information asymmetry (the central government's difficulty in fully monitoring local implementation details) and goal incongruence (local governments must both answer to their superiors on environmental targets and contend with pressures for local economic growth), agents may exhibit complex strategic adaptive behaviors (Kostka and Hobbs, 2012).

Within the context of China's unique central-local relations and governance model (Liu and Zhang, 2024; Zheng, 2007), local governments possess considerable discretionary power when implementing central policies. They do not passively replicate directives from above; instead, based on factors of regional heterogeneity such as their economic development level, fiscal capacity, industrial structure, and governance capabilities (Hu et al., 2019), they engage in selective implementation, adaptive adjustment, or even expedient modifications of central policies. For instance, economically advanced regions might impose stricter standards that go beyond mandatory requirements, whereas regions with weaker fiscal capacity may find themselves unable to fully implement incentive-based policies. This dynamic interplay and adaptation between central and local authorities is crucial for understanding the variation and divergence that occurs as green building policy transitions from “text” to “action”. Therefore, the MLG framework serves as the cornerstone for this study's analysis of policy transmission and variation across different tiers and regions (RQ3).

1.3.2 Analytical dimension: the choice and combination of policy instruments

Within the MLG framework, how governmental tiers realize their policy objectives is examined through the lens of policy instruments. Policy instruments are the specific means adopted by a government to achieve public goals, serving as a direct reflection of its governance strategy (Wegrich, 2021). The selection and combination of different policy instruments by central and local governments directly reflect their respective governance preferences and resource constraints. Merely tabulating the number of instruments used is insufficient; a more critical task is to understand the internal logic of the policy mix (Ye et al., 2024; Zhou et al., 2022). In an effective policy mix, the constituent instruments should be mutually supportive, generating synergies; conversely, a poorly designed mix can lead to conflicts among instruments, creating mutual hindrances or even neutralizing policy effects (Carmen et al., 2023; Okwandu et al., 2024).

To systematically analyze this dimension, this study will employ two complementary classical classification frameworks. The first is Hood's NATO model, which categorizes instruments based on the four core resources at a government's disposal: nodality (information), authority, treasure (finance), and organization (Hood, 1983). The second is the framework by McDonnell and Elmore, which places greater emphasis on the mechanisms through which instruments influence target groups, dividing them into four categories: mandates, inducements, capacity-building, and systemic changes (McDonnell and Elmore, 1987). This dual-framework approach enables a triangulation between resource-based (NATO) and mechanism-based (McDonnell and Elmore) typologies of policy instruments, thereby improving the analytical robustness by examining both the resources government employs and the mechanisms by which they influence target groups. By coding the policy texts, we can quantitatively analyze the frequency of use and combination patterns of different instrument types. Analyzing the compositional characteristics of the policy mix and its dynamic changes across different governmental tiers and time periods (RQ2) can reveal the internal logic of China's green building governance and provide a foundation for assessing the synergy and effectiveness of the policy system.

1.4 Structure of the thesis and key contributions

The structure of this study is organized as follows: Chapter 2 will elaborate on the research design, encompassing data sources, the corpus construction process, and the specific analytical methods employed, such as topic modeling, policy instrument coding, and comparative analysis. Chapter 3 will systematically present the core research findings, articulated through three primary dimensions: the evolution of policy themes, the transformation of the policy mix, and a comparative analysis of MLG and regional dynamics. Chapter 4 will engage in an in-depth discussion of these findings, placing them in dialogue with the theoretical framework to distill the study's principal insights. Chapter 5 will conclude by summarizing the core findings, identifying the limitations of the research, and proposing directions for future inquiry.

This research is anticipated to make the following contributions: Theoretically, through a systematic examination of the specific domain of green building in China, it aims to furnish rich empirical evidence from a non-Western context for the application of MLG and policy instrument theories within the field of environmental technology policy. Practically, it will provide a scientific foundation for China and other developing nations to optimize their green building policy design and enhance governance efficacy. Methodologically, it will demonstrate the analytical potential and value of integrating computational text analysis with in-depth manual coding for the investigation of large-scale, multi-level policy texts.

2 Research design and methodology

To systematically answer the research questions posed in Chapter 1, this study adopts a mixed-methods design centered on computational text analysis. This chapter will elaborate on three core components of the research: first, we will describe the sources of policy text data, the screening criteria, and the process of constructing the policy corpus; second, we will introduce the integrated analytical methods employed, including dynamic topic modeling to identify policy agendas and policy instrument coding to analyze intervention measures; finally, we will specify the analytical strategy used for the MLG comparison.

2.1 Data sources and policy corpus construction

The cornerstone of this study's long-term, multi-level systematic analysis of China's green building policy is the construction of a comprehensive and representative large-scale policy text corpus.

Data sources and retrieval strategy: The policy text data for this study were sourced from “PKULaw”, which is widely recognized as an authoritative data source in the field of Chinese legal and policy research, renowned for its comprehensive collection and timely updates (Hu et al., 2023). As a comprehensive aggregator, PKULaw indexes policy documents from all governmental levels, including central ministries (such as MOHURD) and local government portals, thus ensuring a high degree of representativeness for the corpus of publicly available policies. To ensure both the precision and coverage of our search, we employed a core keyword retrieval strategy. Specifically, within the “laws and regulations” module of the database, we conducted a search using “green building” as the sole search term, applied to either the title or the full text of the documents.

Temporal scope and screening criteria: The temporal scope for the retrieval was set from January 1, 2004, to December 31, 2024. The year 2004 was chosen as the starting point because evidence indicates that the first policy document in China to explicitly mention and promote work related to green building appeared in that year, providing a clear and justifiable baseline for our longitudinal analysis.

Following the initial retrieval, we performed a rigorous manual screening and vetting process to ensure the validity of the corpus. The screening criteria were as follows:

(1) Criterion for document type: Only documents of a public policy nature issued by government agencies—such as laws, administrative regulations, departmental rules, notices, opinions, plans, programs, and technical standards—were retained. All non-policy documents, including news reports, meeting minutes, academic articles, and transcripts of official speeches, were excluded.

(2) Criterion for content relevance: We excluded policy documents that only incidentally mentioned the term “green building” but whose core content was not directly related to the promotion, management, technology, or standards of green building.

(3) Handling of policy timeliness: The primary objective of this study is to examine the signals and intentions conveyed by policies at the time of their issuance, not their subsequent legal status. Therefore, policy documents that were later amended or repealed were retained in the corpus. This longitudinal decision is methodologically crucial. A policy, even if later abolished, represents an integral part of the historical trajectory through its agenda and governance logic during its period of effect. As policy evolution is a time-bound process, these past events create “path dependencies” that constrain and shape future choices (Pierson, 2004). Excluding these documents would obscure the “temporality of design choices”, making it impossible to analyze the complete chain of change or understand how and why the government's policy mix was subsequently (re)designed over time (Howlett, 2023).

Final corpus composition: After applying the aforementioned retrieval and screening procedures, a final “China Green Building Policy Corpus” comprising 2,945 policy texts was constructed. The distribution of these documents across the four administrative levels (central, provincial, municipal, and county) is detailed in Table 1. This dataset, spanning four administrative levels, establishes a solid data foundation for the subsequent multi-dimensional, multi-level comparative analysis.

Table 1

Table 1. Distribution of policy documents by administrative level (2004-2024).

2.2 Analytical methods

This study employs an integrated analytical process that combines in-depth manual coding with computational text analysis, aiming to comprehensively reveal the evolutionary landscape of China's green building policy from multiple dimensions.

2.2.1 Manual coding of policy instruments and reliability assurance

To systematically answer the research questions concerning the selection and combination of policy instruments (RQ2, RQ3), this study conducted in-depth manual coding of every policy text within the corpus.

The coding framework is grounded in two classic policy instrument classification theories from the field of public administration. The first is Hood's NATO model, which categorizes policy instruments into four types based on the core resources available to government: nodality (information-based), authority (legal), treasure (financial), and organization (direct administrative) (Hood, 1983). The second is the classification framework by McDonnell and Elmore, which places greater emphasis on the mechanisms through which instruments influence the behavior of target groups, dividing them into four categories: mandates, inducements, capacity-building, and system-changing (McDonnell and Elmore, 1987). The combination of these two frameworks provides us with complementary analytical perspectives.

The coding process and reliability assurance adhered to a rigorous protocol. First, the research team, drawing upon the aforementioned theoretical frameworks and the characteristics of the policy texts, developed a detailed codebook that specified the definitions, identification criteria, and a rich set of positive and negative examples for each instrument type (Howlett, 2023). Second, a coding team composed of three core researchers, after undergoing systematic training, independently coded the entire corpus of 2,945 policy texts. To resolve inter-coder discrepancies, we did not simply adopt a union or intersection of the codes; instead, we organized multiple “consensus meetings”. During these meetings, all points of disagreement were discussed individually until the three coders reached a unanimous classification based on the rules of the codebook and a shared understanding of the text. To ensure the reliability of the coding, inter-coder agreement was assessed. We calculated the average pairwise Jaccard similarity coefficient, a statistic well-suited for multi-label coding tasks, across the three coders based on the independently coded corpus (prior to discrepancy resolution). The results showed a high level of initial agreement: the average Jaccard similarity was 0.961 for the Hood (NATO) framework and 0.960 for the McDonnell and Elmore framework. All subsequent discrepancies were resolved through group discussion to reach a final unanimous consensus, thereby establishing a solid foundation for the analysis (Nili et al., 2020).

2.2.2 Policy theme identification and dynamic analysis via NMF

To systematically address the question of policy theme evolution (RQ1), this study employs topic modeling to automatically identify the underlying core issues within the policy texts.

The choice of model was based on a comparison of several mainstream alternatives. We explored models including latent dirichlet allocation (LDA), BERTopic, and NMF. After preliminary testing and comparison on our corpus, we ultimately selected NMF. The primary reason for choosing NMF is that, compared to the other models, it generated the most interpretable and clearly delineated thematic results on this study's policy text data. Its core advantage lies in the non-negativity constraint, which allows topics to be intuitively understood as additive combinations of words, thereby effectively identifying themes with minimal overlap and more focused semantic content. This is particularly important for research that requires precise interpretation of policy agendas (Khalafaoui et al., 2022; Tran et al., 2023).

The analytical process comprised three steps: text preprocessing, model training and optimization, and theme interpretation and dynamic analysis.

(1) Text preprocessing and feature extraction: All texts in the corpus underwent standardized preprocessing, including word segmentation, stop-word removal, and the cleaning of irrelevant characters. Subsequently, the processed texts were converted into a document-term matrix weighted by “Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency” (TF-IDF). During this vectorization, we set max_df = 0.90 (to exclude terms appearing in more than 90% of documents), min_df = 5 (to exclude rare terms appearing in fewer than 5 documents), and ngram_range = (1,1) (to focus on single terms). This process helps to more accurately reflect the importance of terms (Alfajri and Bijaksana, 2022).

(2) Model training and parameter optimization: A critical parameter for the NMF model is the selection of the number of topics (the K value). To avoid subjectivity, we employed a comprehensive evaluation method to determine the optimal K. Specifically, we examined the model's reconstruction error, topic coherence scores [e.g., TC-W2V (Greene and Cross, 2023)], and the stability of the results across a range of K values (from K = 5 to K = 20). As shown in Table 2, the topic coherence score peaked at K = 9. Ultimately, by combining quantitative metrics (where K = 9 provided the highest coherence score of 0.6389) with qualitative judgment of domain experts, we selected K = 9 as the value that produced the most interpretable and substantively meaningful set of topics (Song et al., 2018; Ramamoorthy et al., 2024). For reproducibility, the final NMF model was configured with the following key parameters: init = “nndsvda”, solver = “cd”, max_iter = 1000, random_state = 42, and beta_loss = “frobenius”.

(3) Theme interpretation and time-series analysis: After generating the topic-term matrix, the research team conducted manual interpretation and naming of the machine-generated topics, drawing on high-weight feature words, the content of the policy texts, and domain knowledge of green building (Wanna et al., 2024). To capture the dynamic evolution of these themes, we integrated the static results of the NMF with the publication dates of the policies. By calculating the relative prominence of each theme in different years and plotting time-series trend graphs, we were able to identify emerging, declining, and persistent themes, thereby revealing the evolutionary trajectory of the policy agenda (Greene and Cross, 2023; Benlamine et al., 2019).

Table 2

Table 2. NMF model coherence scores for different numbers of topics (K).

2.2.3 Comparative analysis strategy

To provide in-depth answers to the questions regarding the dynamics of MLG, regional disparities (RQ3), and integrated insights (RQ4), this study integrates the results of the preceding thematic analysis and instrument coding, employing a systematic comparative analysis strategy.

The central-local comparative analysis is designed to investigate the transmission of central policy signals and the strategic adaptation by local authorities. We will conduct a diachronic comparison of policies at the central level vs. the local levels (including provincial, municipal, and county) in terms of thematic prominence and the frequency of instrument use. By contrasting the differences in their agenda priorities and instrument preferences across different periods, we can reveal the patterns of “reception” and “strategic adjustment” that local governments exhibit when implementing central strategies.

The regional comparative analysis aims to examine the influence of regional heterogeneity. Following the geo-economic division standards of the National Bureau of Statistics, this study categorizes the local policy samples into four regions: eastern, central, western, and northeastern. We will separately calculate and compare the similarities and differences in each region's thematic focus and policy instrument mix. This approach is intended to reveal the strategic differences in green building governance among regions at varying levels of development and to provide evidence for the spatial differentiation of policy.

3 Research results

This chapter aims to systematically present the core findings derived from the analysis of the China green building policy corpus. First, we will illustrate the overall temporal trends of green building policy issuance across different governmental levels, providing a macro-level context for the subsequent analyses of thematic evolution, instrument choice, and MLG.

3.1 Overall trends in China's green building policy issuance

A statistical analysis of the 2,945 Chinese green building policy texts from 2004 to 2024 reveals significant dynamic characteristics in policy issuance across both temporal and hierarchical dimensions. Figure 1 visually presents the annual evolution of policy counts for four governmental levels: central, provincial, municipal, and county.

Figure 1

Figure 1. Annual evolution of green building policy counts by governmental level—stacked bar chart. The X-axis represents the year (2004–2024), and the Y-axis represents the number of green building policies issued in the corresponding year. The differently colored stacked segments denote the number of policies issued at the central (blue), provincial (red), municipal (green), and county (yellow) levels, respectively.

As illustrated in Figure 1, the issuance of green building policies in China has undergone a process of significant growth and fluctuation over the past two decades. In the initial stage of policymaking (2004-2009), the number of policies issued at all levels was relatively low, with the total annual average remaining below 20. This indicates that green building was still in a phase of conceptual introduction and preliminary exploration. Beginning in 2010, policy issuance entered a period of rapid growth, with a particularly sharp increase during the “12th 5-Year Plan” period (2011–2015). During this time, the intensive issuance of central-level policies (e.g., 44 in 2012; 47 in 2013) significantly drove the formulation of local policies, leading to a substantial rise in both provincial and municipal policy counts. This pushed the total annual average to over 150 policies and culminated in the first peak period from 2013 to 2015, with an average of nearly 240 policies issued per year.

In 2016, a sharp decrease in the number of central-level policies to just two led to a decline in the total policy volume for that year. However, local levels, especially provincial and municipal governments, maintained a high degree of activity during the “13th 5-Year Plan” period (2016–2020). The years 2017 and 2021 represent two other peak years for policy issuance, with total annual counts reaching 262 and 275, respectively. These peaks were largely attributable to the sustained efforts of provincial and municipal governments. For instance, provincial policies reached a high of 133 in 2017, while in 2021, provincial and municipal policies numbered 127 and 141, respectively. This pattern is likely associated with the national emphasis on green development and ecological civilization during these periods, as well as the proactive implementation of related strategic deployments by local governments.

From the perspective of hierarchical composition, provincial and municipal policies constitute the main body of China's green building policy system, together accounting for the vast majority of the total volume. Although central-level policies are fewer in number, their concentrated issuance during key periods (e.g., 2010–2015) has often served to lead and catalyze waves of local policymaking. County-level policies are the least numerous within the entire policy system, with a low annual average. However, their existence indicates that the reach of green building policy has extended to grassroots implementation units.

Overall, the history of China's green building policy issuance clearly reflects an evolutionary trajectory from preliminary exploration to rapid development and, subsequently, to sustained deepening. The most active periods of policymaking are closely correlated with major national development blueprints (such as the 5-Year Plans) and key strategic deployments (like the “dual carbon” goals), exhibiting a general trend of central leadership, local responsiveness, and proactive implementation. The fluctuations in policy volume also suggest adjustments in the policy agenda and shifts in policy priorities across different periods, providing an important macro-level context for the subsequent in-depth analysis of policy themes and instruments.

3.2 The Core thematic landscape of China's green building policy and its overall evolution

To systematically address this study's core research question (RQ1) concerning the evolution of China's green building policy agenda, we employed the NMF topic modeling methodology to analyze the entire corpus of 2,945 policy texts.

The determination of model parameters is a critical step in topic modeling. To ensure the objectivity and scientific rigor of selecting the number of topics (the K value), we conducted a systematic test for K values ranging from 5 to 20. For each K value, we calculated the model's topic coherence score (C_V), a metric widely used to evaluate the interpretability of topics, where a higher score typically signifies better topic quality. The test results are presented in Table 2.

As shown in Table 2, the topic coherence score peaked at 0.6389 when K = 9. Although it fluctuated thereafter, it did not surpass this peak. For further verification, we conducted a detailed manual interpretation and comparison of the topic sets generated at several high-scoring points, including K = 7, K = 9, and K = 17. The results indicated that when K = 7, some topics were overly broad, merging policy issues that should have been distinct. Conversely, when the K value was too high (e.g., K = 17), it led to issues of topic redundancy and excessive granularity, with some topics having ambiguous meanings and reduced interpretability. By integrating quantitative metrics with qualitative judgment, we found that the set of topics generated at K = 9 was the most semantically clear, distinct, and comprehensive, and could most effectively summarize the core agenda of China's green building policy. Therefore, this study ultimately determined to extract nine core policy themes.

The explanations of these 9 core themes, their key words and connotations are detailed in Table 3. This thematic map reveals the complete composition of China's green building policy system, which can be summarized into four logical levels: the first is the strategic and fundamental level, including the development plan at the macro level (T0) and the evaluation standard system as the technical cornerstone (T4); The second is the execution and management level, which covers specific identification and certification management (T2) and supervision and inspection during the process (T3). The third aspect is the incentive and promotion level, which involves incentives for innovation demonstrations (T7) and the promotion and exchange of technical concepts (T5). The fourth aspect is the governance and support level, which includes the formulation of local standards (T8), the construction of mechanisms such as expert committees (T6), and the attention to market participants (T1). This structure clearly reflects the all-round layout of China's green building policies, from top-level design to specific implementation, and then to market cultivation and institutional guarantee.

Table 3

Table 3. Core themes of China's green building policy identified by the NMF model and their characteristics.

To reveal the dynamic evolution of these core policy themes over the past two decades, we calculated the average intensity of each theme in the policy texts of each year and plotted its time series trend chart (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Figure 2. Independent annual evolution of average intensity for each core policy theme.

Figure 2 visually presents the dynamic trajectory of China's green building policy agenda, which has evolved non-linearly, exhibiting fluctuations and alternations among different themes at various stages of development. Overall, the evolution of the policy agenda reveals a clear path from “laying the foundation” to “deepening implementation”. In the initial phase of the study period (c. 2004–2010), the policy agenda was dominated by two themes: “Green Building Evaluation Standard and Labeling System” (T4) and “Incentives for Green Building Innovation and Demonstration Projects” (T7). This clearly reflects the government's core strategy during this stage: on one hand, to provide a “definition” and “language” for green building by establishing a localized evaluation standard; and on the other, to cultivate the market, accumulate experience, and establish a leading role by incentivizing demonstration projects.

As the policy system gradually matured, beginning in 2010 and particularly during the “12th 5-Year Plan” period, the focus of the agenda began to shift. The intensity of “Green Building and Energy Conservation Development Planning” (T0) peaked around 2013, signifying the full integration of green building into the national macro-level development strategy. Concurrently, policy attention started to permeate to more specific implementation levels. The intensity of “Supervision and Inspection of Building Energy Conservation and Prefabricated Construction” (T3) rose significantly between 2014 and 2018, indicating a pivot in the policy agenda from “what to encourage” to “how to ensure implementation”, with regulation becoming a new focal point.

In the later period of the study, especially since the “13th 5-Year Plan” and the proposal of the “dual carbon” goals, the policy agenda has undergone further deepening and refinement. The intensities of “Green Building Label Application and Certification Management” (T2) and “Development and Issuance of Local Green Building Standards” (T8) have shown a sustained upward trend. This signals the policy system's entry into a new stage of “refined governance”. The former indicates a growing demand for the standardization of the entire process management for green building projects, while the latter highlights the increasingly important role of local governments in tailoring and detailing standards under the national top-level design. Correspondingly, the intensity of earlier guiding themes, such as “Promotion and Exchange of Green Building Technologies” (T5) and “Incentives for Innovation and Demonstration Projects” (T7), has tended to level off or decline, reflecting a shift in the policy mix's center of gravity from market cultivation to broader, standardized regulation. The themes of “Entities in Green Building Projects” (T1) and “Expert Committee and Mechanism Building for Green Building Evaluation” (T6) have remained present throughout as supporting issues, providing institutional safeguards for the operation of the entire policy system.

3.3 Comparative evolution of core themes in policies across different governmental levels

To conduct an in-depth investigation of the operational characteristics of China's green building policy within its MLG system (RQ3), this study undertakes a diachronic comparative analysis of the policy agendas across four governmental levels: central, provincial, municipal, and county. By examining the evolution of the relative intensity of policy themes at each level, it is possible to reveal the vertical transmission process of central policy intentions and the strategic adaptations made by local governments during reception and implementation.

Figure 3 clearly illustrates the division of labor and interactive logic among different governmental levels, revealing a typical hierarchical governance model of “top-level design, reception and transformation, and execution and implementation”. The central-level policy agenda reflects its core role as a “strategic formulator” and “agenda setter”. In the initial study period (2004–2009), central policy was highly focused on the “Green Building Evaluation Standards and Labeling Systems” (T4), with its average intensity peaking at 0.119 in 2008, supplemented by an emphasis on “Incentives for Innovation and Demonstration Projects” (T7). This indicates that the central government's primary task during this stage was to provide a foundational institutional framework and the initial impetus for market cultivation in the emerging green building sector. During the subsequent rapid development period, a significant agenda shift occurred between 2011 and 2015, as the focus of the central agenda pivoted sharply to “Entities in Green Building Projects” (T1). Its intensity soared from 0.035 in 2010 to 0.222 in 2014, reflecting a major reorientation of policy toward mobilizing and regulating market participants and establishing a healthy market order. In the later study period, particularly after 2020, attention to “Green Building Label Application and Certification Management” (T2) increased markedly, reaching a high of 0.164 in 2021, which signifies a deepening of central policy toward more refined process management and standardized governance.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Comparative evolution of the annual relative intensity of core themes by policy level.

The provincial level, as a key pivot connecting the central and grassroots levels, exhibits a comprehensive policy agenda with a “bridging” function. Provincial policies are relatively more balanced in their thematic composition, both actively responding to the central government's strategic priorities in different periods—such as the early emphasis on technology promotion (T5) and demonstration incentives (T7)—and proactively assuming the responsibility of translating macro-level central deployments into concrete local action plans. Over time, the relative intensities of “Green Building and Energy Conservation Development Planning” (T0), “Evaluation Standard and Labeling System” (T4), and “Development and Issuance of Local Green Building Standards” (T8) have consistently remained high, highlighting the leading role of provincial governments in formulating regional plans, standards, and evaluation systems.

The municipal level serves as the primary arena for policy execution, with an agenda focused on the implementation and supervision of specific projects. The municipal agenda demonstrates a degree of synchronicity with the provincial agenda but places a particularly strong emphasis on “Supervision and Inspection of Building Energy Conservation and Prefabricated Construction” (T3), especially between 2014 and 2018. This clearly reflects the direct responsibilities of municipal governments in areas such as project supervision and the enforcement of energy-saving measures. Concurrently, the subsequent rise in attention to “Label Application and Certification Management” (T2), which grew from 0.0196 in 2019 to 0.0601 in 2024, indicates that the need for refined policy management has been effectively transmitted to the implementation level. Although the policy sample at the county level is smaller, its agenda similarly reflects an execution-oriented characteristic, representing the final point of implementation for central strategies at the grassroots of the administrative system.

3.4 The selection and evolution of the policy instrument mix

This section aims to systematically answer the research question concerning the selection and combination of policy instruments (RQ2). To achieve this objective, this study conducted a systematic coding of the specific policy measures contained within the policy texts to reveal the preferences, combination patterns, and dynamic evolution of intervention strategies in China's green building policy. The coding of policy instruments was primarily based on Hood's NATO model and the classification framework by McDonnell and Elmore.

Overall, the policy mix for green building in China exhibits an imbalanced structure dominated by regulatory instruments. As illustrated in Figure 4, under both Hood's (NATO) resource-based framework and McDonnell and Elmore's intervention-logic-based framework, the frequency of use for authority and mandates instruments is predominant. This profoundly corroborates the regulatory-driven nature of China's green building development trajectory. In tandem, organization and capacity-building instruments are also extensively employed, indicating that the government complements the use of mandatory measures with a focus on its own organizational actions and on enhancing societal capacity to support policy implementation. By contrast, the use of treasure/inducements is moderate, while the application of nodality and system-changing instruments is relatively infrequent. This suggests that considerable scope remains for the policy system to leverage market-based incentives and pursue deeper institutional innovations.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Comparison of the overall frequency of use for Hood (NATO) and McDonnell and Elmore policy instruments.

The dynamic evolution of the policy instrument mix (Figures 5, 6) further illuminates the shifting logic of governance. Throughout the study period, authority/mandates instruments maintained their dominant position across all governmental levels, with their peak frequency of use correlating highly with the overall active periods of policy issuance. The deployment of treasure/inducements, however, demonstrates pronounced phase-specific characteristics. At the central level, for instance, the proportion of policies incorporating fiscal instruments peaked at 51.5% in 2015, a figure consistent with the national policy orientation at the time, which emphasized market cultivation. Subsequently, this proportion declined, suggesting that incentive-based tools have primarily functioned as “catalysts” during specific periods within the policy mix, rather than as sustained pillars of support. Local levels mirrored this trend, with the proportion of policies using fiscal tools at the provincial and municipal levels reaching highs of 66.3% and 56.8% in 2013, respectively.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Temporal evolution of Hood (NATO) policy instrument frequency by governmental level.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Temporal evolution of McDonnell and Elmore policy instrument frequency by governmental level.

A strong intrinsic logical correlation also exists between different policy themes and the choice of instruments, as illustrated in Figure 7. Themes centered on macro-planning and standard-setting, such as “Development Planning” (T0), “Evaluation Standards and Labeling Systems” (T4), and “Development and Issuance of Local Green Building Standards” (T8), exhibit the highest co-occurrence frequency with Authority/Mandates instruments, reflecting the government's reliance on regulatory measures when establishing the institutional foundation. In contrast, “Incentives for Innovation and Demonstration Projects” (T7) correlates highly with Treasure/Inducements instruments; within policies related to this theme, these two instrument types were used in 49.5% and 52.0% of cases, respectively, clearly reflecting the theme's underlying policy intent. Furthermore, themes such as “Promotion and Exchange of Green Building Technologies” (T5) and “Expert Committee and Mechanism Building for Green Building Evaluation” (T6) are more closely associated with nodality/capacity-building and organization instruments. These specific patterns of theme-instrument pairing reveal the differentiated governance strategies the government employs when addressing different policy problems.

Figure 7

Figure 7. Heatmap of the association between NMF core themes and policy instruments.

3.5 The landscape of core themes and instruments in policies across different regions

To investigate the influence of regional heterogeneity on policy implementation (RQ3), this study conducts a comparative analysis of local policies across the eastern, central, western, and northeastern regions. The aim is to reveal the differentiated landscape of policy responses among these areas.

In terms of the regional distribution of policy agendas, Figure 8 shows that the eastern and central regions exhibit a relatively higher overall intensity of focus on green building policy, followed by the western region, with the northeastern region being the lowest. This distribution aligns broadly with the socioeconomic development gradient among these regions. Figure 9 further reveals the dynamic differences in the evolution of policy agendas across regions. The eastern region, as a pioneer, demonstrates the most complete and deepened evolutionary path: after an early focus on technology promotion (T5) and demonstration incentives (T7), it rapidly pivoted to the construction of planning (T0) and standard systems (T4). In recent years, it has significantly intensified its focus on “Label Application and Certification Management” (T2) and the “Development and Issuance of Local Green Building Standards” (T8), reflecting its leadership trend in policy deepening and standardization. The evolutionary trend of the central region is similar to that of the east, but with a more sustained focus on “Development Planning” (T0) and a greater emphasis on “Supervision and Inspection” (T3) during specific periods, reflecting its dual emphasis on planning-led development and implementation oversight as a follower. The policy agenda in the western region also evolved from incentives to regulation, but its sustained attention to the “Development and Issuance of Local Green Building Standards” (T8) is particularly prominent. This may reflect the strategy of the western region to prioritize the establishment of standards suited to local realities as a key task when adopting national strategies. Although the policy sample for the northeastern region is smaller, its agenda likewise shows an evolutionary characteristic from early incentives to a later focus on planning and standards construction.

Figure 8

Figure 8. Stacked bar charts of the overall average intensity of core themes in different regions.

Figure 9

Figure 9. Stacked bar chart of the percentage evolution of the annual relative intensity of core themes in different regions.

Regarding preferences in the selection of policy instruments, Figure 10 indicates that all regions exhibit a high reliance on authority/mandates instruments, once again confirming the ubiquity of the regulatory-driven model in China. However, inter-regional differences also exist. The eastern and central regions are more active in the absolute number of all types of instruments used and also make more prominent use of organization/capacity-building instruments. This may be related to their stronger governmental capacity and more mature market environments. Overall, when responding to national strategy, China's local green building policies exhibit both convergence (e.g., a universal reliance on regulatory instruments) and context-specific divergence, manifesting in differentiated agenda priorities and instrument mixes. This profoundly reflects the complexity and adaptability of policy implementation within a MLG framework.

Figure 10

Figure 10. Heatmap of policy instrument selection preferences in local policies by region.

4 Discussion

Through a systematic analysis of 2,945 Chinese green building policy texts from 2004 to 2024, this study has delineated the dynamic evolutionary landscape of the policy domain in terms of its thematic agenda, instrument choice, and MLG. This chapter aims to provide an in-depth interpretation of the core findings presented in Chapter 3, placing them in dialogue with the theoretical framework constructed in Chapter 1, systematically answering the four core research questions posed by this study, and ultimately, distilling the research's theoretical and practical implications.

4.1 Core findings and theoretical dialogue

This section is organized around the four core research questions (RQs), integrating the empirical findings and engaging them in a dialogue with the theoretical framework for each question.

4.1.1 The evolutionary trajectory of the policy agenda: a governance logic from foundation to deepening (answering RQ1)

The first core question of this study sought to investigate the evolutionary characteristics of China's green building policy agenda. The NMF topic analysis results in Chapter 3 clearly reveal that the policy agenda has not developed linearly over the past two decades; instead, it has followed a distinct path from “laying the foundation” to “deepening implementation” and subsequently to “refined governance”. In the initial study period (c. 2004–2010), the agenda was dominated by the “Evaluation Standards and Labeling Systems” (T4) and “Incentives for Innovation and Demonstration Projects” (T7). This reflects the government's core strategy during this phase: to provide the foundational institutional supply and initial market cultivation for an emerging field. As the policy system matured, the agenda's center of gravity shifted toward “Development Planning” (T0) and “Supervision and Inspection” (T3), signaling that green building was being integrated into macro-level strategy with an increasing emphasis on implementation and compliance. In the later period, the sustained rise in the intensity of “Label Application and Certification Management” (T2) and “Development and Issuance of Local Green Building Standards” (T8) marks the policy system's entry into a new stage of refined governance, characterized by a greater focus on procedural standardization and context-specific adjustments.

This evolutionary trajectory profoundly reflects China's adaptive governance process in specific technological policy domains. The shifts in the policy agenda were not random but were closely linked to major national strategic deployments (e.g., the 5-Year Plans, the “dual carbon” goals). This demonstrates the government's process of adaptation when facing complex, emerging issues: from building a macro-level framework, to strengthening implementation in the medium term, and finally to making refined adjustments in the later stages. This deepening of the agenda—from the strategic to the tactical, from top-level design to concrete operation—is the most salient feature of the two-decade evolution of China's green building policy.

4.1.2 The internal logic of the policy instrument mix: strategic pairing under regulatory dominance (answering RQ2)

The second core research question of this study focused on the patterns of policy instrument selection and combination. The findings reveal that China's green building policy mix is characterized by an imbalanced structure dominated by authority/mandates instruments, a feature consistent with the governance tradition of a strong state role in China's socioeconomic transition (Hu et al., 2023). Regulatory instruments (e.g., mandatory standards, planning requirements) form the “backbone” of the policy system, establishing a non-negotiable bottom line for the market.

However, merely noting the predominance of regulatory instruments is insufficient. From the perspective of the policy mix (Zhou et al., 2022), a more significant finding is the strategic pairing among different types of instruments. Our analysis indicates that Authority instruments are often deployed in synergy with organization/capacity-building instruments, forming a “regulation + support” combination. This implies that while issuing directives, the government also provides the necessary support for market entities to comply with regulations by establishing specialized agencies, organizing training, and offering technical guidance.

Meanwhile, the use of treasure/inducements instruments exhibits distinct phase-specific characteristics, with their peak usage concentrated in the key period of market cultivation (c. 2012–2015). This suggests that in China's green building policy mix, incentive-based tools have been used more as “catalysts” and “boosters” for specific periods rather than as universal, sustained intervention measures. It is noteworthy that the relative underutilization of nodality and system-changing instruments implies that significant potential remains for leveraging information empowerment and deep institutional innovation to drive green building development. Overall, China's green building policy mix reflects a pragmatic governance logic, centered on robust regulation and strategically complemented by organizational support and fiscal incentives tailored to the needs of different developmental stages.

4.1.3 Policy transmission and variation under multi-level governance (answering RQ3)

The third core question of this study sought to investigate the transmission and adaptation of central policies at the local level. Our findings align closely with the core tenets of MLG and Principal-Agent Theory (PAT) (Wang and Pan, 2023), clearly revealing the variation and differentiation of policy as it is transmitted vertically.

The empirical results demonstrate a clear functional division of labor between the central and local governments in their policy agendas. The central level, acting as the “principal”, places a greater emphasis on strategic guidance, standard-setting, and promoting emerging fields, rendering its policy agenda more macro-level and forward-looking. In contrast, local governments, as “agents”, focus their agendas more on concrete implementation. For instance, the provincial level concentrates on translating central deployments into local plans and standards, while the municipal level centers its efforts on project supervision and certification management.

However, local governments are not merely passive executors. In the process of adopting central directives, they exhibit significant strategic adaptation (Kostka and Hobbs, 2012). This adaptive behavior manifests in two primary ways. First, it involves adjusting policy priorities based on local realities. For example, the Central region's heightened emphasis on “Supervision and Inspection” compared to other regions may reflect its added focus on implementation and compliance as a follower. Second, policy responses differ due to regional heterogeneity. The eastern region, as a forerunner in economic development, displays the most complete and deepened evolutionary path for its policy agenda, being the first to enter the stage of refined governance. The western region, meanwhile, shows a more sustained focus on the “Formulation of Local Standards”, which may reflect its strategy of prioritizing the creation of standards that align with local resource endowments and technological capabilities as a key task when implementing national strategies. This context-specific policy variation profoundly embodies the complex, dynamic interplay and adjustment between central and local authorities within China's unitary state framework (Hu et al., 2019).

Furthermore, our findings offer a critical reflection on the application of classical MLG and PAT in China's unitary governance structure. While PAT often emphasizes agent “shirking” due to information asymmetry, our results suggest a different dynamic. The “strategic adaptation” observed in local governments is not merely passive execution or opportunistic deviation. Rather, it represents a calculated alignment of central mandates with local resource endowments. This process is heavily mediated by China's strong top-down incentive and accountability mechanisms (e.g., environmental performance targets and fiscal transfers). We therefore propose that this model is better understood as a “hierarchical and adaptive MLG”, where the central principal actively shapes the boundaries of local adaptation rather than merely reacting to agent behavior. This extends PAT by highlighting how centralized accountability structures can coexist with, and even strategically utilize, local policy variation to achieve national goals.

4.1.4 Integrated insights: governance characteristics of china's green building policy (answering RQ4)

Synthesizing the preceding analyses, we can generalize the overall evolutionary characteristics of China's green building policy. It exhibits a governance model of being “strategy-driven, regulation-dominant, hierarchically structured, and adaptively implemented”. This model reflects the core logic of the state in promoting development within a specific technological domain.

First, its most salient feature is being strategy-driven. Major shifts in the policy agenda are highly synchronized with top-level national strategies, such as the 5-Year Plans and the “dual carbon” goals. This indicates that green building policy is not an isolated technical issue but rather a critical instrument serving the nation's grand development narrative. Second, regulation-dominance constitutes its fundamental characteristic. The policy instrument mix relies heavily on mandatory standards and administrative orders, supplemented by phased incentives and organizational support. This is a typical intervention model that emphasizes governmental control and the capacity to shape the market. Third, a hierarchical structure defines its operational mechanism. The four tiers of government—central, provincial, municipal, and county—play distinct roles in the policy chain, from strategic formulation to implementation on the ground. This creates a clear functional division that ensures the vertical transmission of policy directives. Finally, adaptive implementation reveals its inherent flexibility. Under a unified top-level design, local governments make strategic adjustments based on regional heterogeneity. This leads to a diversified landscape of policy in practice and avoids the problems that could arise from a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

The advantage of this governance model lies in its capacity for rapid resource mobilization, enabling the swift deployment and scaled-up promotion of policies nationwide. This was demonstrably effective in the initial phase of advancing green building from a nascent concept. However, its potential challenges also warrant attention. For example, an over-reliance on regulation may stifle spontaneous market innovation, while information asymmetries and goal incongruence between central and local governments could lead to an “implementation gap” or diminished policy effectiveness during the execution process.

This “strategy-driven, regulation-dominant” model characterizing China's approach can be situated within a comparative context by examining other major economies. The European Union, for example, operates under the comprehensive “European Green Deal” framework, which aims for carbon neutrality by 2050 (Bonoli et al., 2021) and utilizes a robust legislative framework with stringent mechanisms to influence national policies (Kaveshnikov, 2024). While the EU also employs voluntary certification schemes like Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) (Dall'O et al., 2013), its governance is distinguished by this highly integrated and regulatory structure (Kaveshnikov, 2024). Japan, on the other hand, presents a different case. Although it utilizes evaluation standards like Comprehensive Assessment System for Built Environment Efficiency (CASBEE) (Dall'O et al., 2013) and engages in international cooperation (Sanada, 2023), its domestic climate change governance model has been described as tending toward state intervention and traditional modes of governance (Loher, 2012), showing similarities in this aspect to China. Both Japan and the EU do, however, employ decentralized administration and competitive financial distribution through regional policy schemes to implement initiatives (Sanada, 2023). This comparison underscores the distinct emphasis on state-led regulation within China's green building policy evolution, even when compared to another East Asian nation like Japan, while highlighting the unique comprehensiveness of the EU's legislative approach.

4.2 Research implications, innovation, and contributions

This study's systematic investigation of the two-decade evolution of China's green building policy yields several valuable implications for public policy theory and practice.

Theoretically, this study provides rich empirical evidence for the application of MLG and policy instrument theories in the context of a non-Western, transitional country. By revealing China's “strategy-driven, regulation-dominant” model in a specific technological policy domain, this research enriches our understanding of policy process diversity and contributes a unique case from China to comparative policy studies (Hu et al., 2023; Wegrich, 2021). In particular, the study's findings on the dynamic interactions and strategic adaptation between central and local governments regarding policy agendas and instrument choice offer a new illustration for the application of principal-agent theory in a specific context, demonstrating how “agents” exercise their agency under particular institutional constraints to balance multiple objectives (Wang and Pan, 2023; Kostka and Hobbs, 2012).

Practically, the research findings offer clear guidance for optimizing China's future green building policy. First, the imbalance in the policy mix revealed by the study, especially the relative underutilization of nodality and system-changing instruments, indicates that future policy design should focus on optimizing the instrument portfolio. While continuing to leverage the foundational role of regulatory instruments, greater attention should be paid to the precision and sustainability of incentive-based tools. Furthermore, instruments such as information disclosure, capacity building, and market-based trading should be vigorously developed to stimulate endogenous market dynamics and enhance the synergistic effects among instruments (Miao and Li, 2018). Second, the significant regional heterogeneity identified in the study calls for greater efforts to enhance the precision of central-local policy coordination. When formulating macro-level policies, the central government should reserve more space for local, context-specific adjustments and establish more effective performance feedback and evaluation mechanisms to scientifically address the challenges posed by regional differences and achieve adaptive governance (Liu and Zhang, 2024). These implications also offer valuable lessons for other developing countries facing similar challenges.

Methodologically, the primary contribution of this study lies in its integration and innovation. By constructing a multi-level policy text database spanning a long time series, this study innovatively combines NMF topic modeling with time-series analysis to track the evolution of policy themes. It also systematically applies classic policy instrument classification frameworks for in-depth coding and comparative analysis, ultimately integrating the three dimensions of thematic evolution, instrument choice, and MLG within a unified framework. This integrated analytical approach demonstrates how computational social science methods can be used to process and analyze large-scale, multi-level policy text corpora, offering a generalizable and systematic analytical framework for exploring the dynamic evolution of complex policy systems (Li et al., 2024).

5 Conclusion and outlook

Through a systematic analysis of 2,945 central and local green building policy texts from 2004 to 2024—combining NMF topic modeling, policy instrument coding, and a comparative MLG perspective—this study has provided an in-depth delineation of the dynamic evolutionary landscape of China's green building policy in terms of its thematic priorities, instrument mix, and central-local interactions. The study finds that the issuance of green building policies in China has, over the past two decades, progressed from preliminary exploration to rapid development and, subsequently, to sustained deepening. The most active periods of policymaking are closely correlated with major national development plans and strategic deployments, exhibiting an overall pattern of central leadership and proactive local response. The evolution of policy themes demonstrates a trajectory of deepening and focusing, moving from macro-level planning and initial standard-setting toward more operational concerns such as specific certification management, the refinement of local standards, and process supervision, and has been significantly influenced by national strategies like the “dual carbon” goals. In terms of instrument choice, China's green building policy exhibits a marked preference for Authority/Mandates instruments, supplemented by organization/capacity-building tools. The use of Treasure/Inducements instruments is characteristic of specific phases, while the application of nodality and system-changing instruments is relatively underdeveloped. The MLG analysis reveals that central policy focuses on strategic guidance and standard-setting, while local governments, in adopting central directives, demonstrate strategic adaptation and regional heterogeneity, providing profound empirical insights for the MLG and Principal-Agent theories employed in this study.

While this study aimed for comprehensive and in-depth analysis, several limitations should be acknowledged. First, an analysis based on policy texts primarily reflects policy “intent” rather than “actual implementation effects”, and a gap may exist between the two. Future research could attempt to combine policy text analysis with quantitative assessments of policy implementation outcomes. Second, although the manual coding process underwent rigorous reliability testing, the influence of researcher subjectivity cannot be entirely eliminated; similarly, the parameter selection and theme interpretation for models like NMF also involve a degree of subjectivity. Third, this study's analysis of the interactive effects among policy instruments is mainly based on co-occurrence frequencies and trend comparisons; a deeper exposition of the underlying causal mechanisms awaits further quantitative and qualitative research. Furthermore, while the data coverage is extensive, the possibility that some local, non-publicly released policy documents were not included cannot be completely ruled out.

Looking ahead, the development of China's green building policy is expected to place greater emphasis on quality enhancement, systemic synergy, and innovation-driven approaches. With the continuous advancement of the “dual carbon” goals, the policy system is likely to deepen further in directions such as life-cycle carbon emission management, deep energy-efficiency retrofitting for existing buildings, the scaled-up application of renewable energy in buildings, and enhancing building climate resilience. The policy instrument mix is anticipated to become more diversified and refined, with market-based incentive mechanisms and performance-based policy tools expected to see greater application to improve policy efficiency and sustainability. In terms of MLG, how to further rationalize the division of administrative powers and expenditure responsibilities between central and local governments, stimulate local innovation, and ensure the effective implementation of national goals will remain a key area of ongoing exploration.

Future research could be extended in several directions. First, in-depth case studies could be conducted on specific green building policies (e.g., fiscal subsidies, mandatory standards) or specific regions (e.g., typical urban agglomerations) to reveal the concrete mechanisms, barriers, and success factors in the policy implementation process. Second, quantitative assessments of the synergistic and conflicting mechanisms within the policy instrument mix could be strengthened, for instance, by using quasi-experimental designs or agent-based modeling (ABM), to provide more precise guidance for optimizing policy combinations. Third, a deeper investigation into the underlying drivers of policy differences across regions (e.g., local governance capacity, industrial structure, socio-cultural factors) and an assessment of the actual impact of these differences on green building development outcomes would be valuable. Fourth, future work could attempt to integrate policy text analysis with multi-source data—such as broader socioeconomic data, environmental data, and public opinion data—to obtain a more comprehensive and three-dimensional understanding of policy formulation, implementation, and impact. Through such continued and in-depth research, more valuable knowledge and insights can be contributed to the advancement of the green building cause and sustainable development in China and globally.

Data availability statement

The datasets analyzed for this study can be found in the Figshare at http://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29665403.

Author contributions

JC: Conceptualization, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. YX: Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft. YY: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. CW: Formal analysis, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft. HH: Data curation, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.

Funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Generative AI statement

The author(s) declare that no Gen AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.

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