Co-developing sustainability – a consumer-inclusive approach to wooden housing business in Finland

Abstract

The housing construction industry can address sustainability issues by developing its business practices. This requires a shift from a firm-driven business logic to a consumer-inclusive approach where consumers and businesses together enhance sustainable development. By analyzing data from focus group discussions with both industry experts in the wooden multi-storey construction business and consumers residing in novel wooden buildings, this study examines how businesses can engage consumers in the development of sustainable housing. The results are presented as an iterative dialogue process that acknowledges consumers as important actors to whom innovative housing solutions should be appropriately introduced and whose lived experiences need to be understood. The findings indicate that consumer experiences can feed the creation and uptake of innovations that enhance sustainability in the construction sector. The study fosters the material aspect of sustainable housing and, by highlighting consumer participation and communication, proposes tools for its consumer-inclusive co-development.

Keywords:

• Construction industry
• housing
• sustainability
• consumer-inclusive
• focus group
• wood building

1. Introduction

Both the socio-economic and environmental aspects of sustainability pose challenges for the construction industry, urban planning and policymaking in the context of housing. Access to housing and shelter is a basic human need; however, the high material footprint of housing, including both energy use and housing infrastructure, calls for action on energy and resource efficiency, such as the use of innovative building materials (Lettenmeier et al., 2014). Similar to household energy consumption (Gram-Hanssen, 2011, p. 63), interaction with construction materials is an element of consumers’ daily life yet goes largely unnoticed by them.

Advancements in residential construction technology have led to the development of innovative methods and materials that promise enhanced sustainability in the industry. For example, continuous innovation and product improvement have advanced the technical development of wooden multi-storey construction (WMC) over the 2010s, especially in forest-rich North America and Scandinavia (Ball, 2003; Høibø et al., 2015; Larasatie et al., 2018). Thus, in countries such as Finland, WMC now offers an alternative to the concrete and steel that dominate the high-rise construction industry, with advantages such as reduced CO₂ emissions (carbon storage) and quicker completion time of building projects (e.g. Ottelin et al., 2021; Toppinen et al., 2019; Van de Kuilen et al., 2011). Owing to off-site construction technologies, wood building technology can achieve high material efficiency and circularity, thus supporting more sustainable housing development. A systematic review by Lima et al. (2021) suggests that the social and economic aspects of construction are much less frequently addressed than its environmental aspects and that, from the perspective of building materials, wood has only a marginal role despite its environmental benefits. Nevertheless, WMC is a novelty to many consumers, and its market share is growing only slowly, one explanation for which is low consumer acceptance and interest in new products, techniques and materials (Mont et al., 2017). Some scholars (e.g. Hansen, 2010) suggest that the wood industry should adopt a more active approach to innovation in response to customer needs to successfully compete with the steel and concrete industry.

The construction industry is often characterized as a conservative business that underestimates buildings’ role in climate change and lacks innovative capacity and consumer focus (e.g. Kriese & Scholz, 2011). The housing industry typically approaches consumer engagement via the degree of customization possibilities in standardized buildings (Schoenwitz et al., 2012). Although some studies (e.g. Jussila & Lähtinen, 2020) highlight the learning and information exchange between building process actors, integrated consumers are typically the future homeowners of ongoing building projects. Despite calls for customer focus – recognizing the experiences of consumers, investing in service quality and finding new approaches to translate consumer needs into products and services – the house-building industry has not managed to renew itself (Barlow & Ozaki, 2003; Craig & Roy, 2004). It is still exceptional to draw on early resident dialogues, such as in the example of a construction company in Sweden (Gromark, Andersson & Braide, 2021). The lack of consumer focus is also associated with criticisms regarding sustainability in residential property marketing, where sustainability is considered to be inconsistent, non-integrative and focused on single, typically visible issues (Kriese & Scholz, 2011).

Housing studies conceptualize homes as physically, psychologically and socially constructed spaces that may also serve as financial assets (Somerville, 1997). The previously identified socio-cultural meanings of homes include security, privacy, familiarity and identity (Easthope, 2004; Somerville, 1997). This study focuses on sustainability as an emerging meaning of homes. The meanings of homes are socio-spatially constructed in a relationship with household members, the physical unit of a house and/or material possessions (Easthope, 2004; Fuentes, 2011; McCarthy, 2020). For example, Fuentes & Hagberg (2013) argue that consumption practices are inherently social and cultural; consumers attach meanings to products and experiences, and ideologies are produced in the market. Thus, the market, policy, regulation and cultural context should provide consumers possibilities to make a home – to control one’s dwelling (Easthope, 2014; McCarthy, 2020).

Consumers are key actors in assessing the functionality of housing and assigning meanings to their homes. They are not only buyers, owners or renters of apartments but also key users interacting with buildings; they have the most experience about how engineered solutions work in everyday use. Indeed, houses are defined as material artefacts that are part of the activities of living and housing and are open to interaction with occupants and their different practices (Hand et al., 2007; Rinkinen & Jalas, 2017). This definition supports the idea of a home as an ongoing, continuous process and practice rather than a static entity (Fuentes, 2011; McCarthy, 2020).

When consumers adapt homes to serve practical purposes, they appropriate products and services (Warde, 2014). Appropriation of innovations refers to the idea of individuals being the crossing point of many different practices: technology does not determine human actions, but technologies, mass-produced and alien products, are open to individual interpretation and domestication, where people assign to them particular personal meanings and convert them to serve their own practical needs (Gram-Hanssen, 2011; Warde, 2014, pp. 283–284). Current innovation literature suggests that innovations are interactive learning processes wherein consumers play an active role in appropriation (Toivonen-Noro & Kijima, 2018): instead of linear processes from invention to diffusion, the meanings and uses of innovations are co-developed with consumers.

Goodman et al. (2017), in their case study including a construction company, analyzed stakeholder roles in linear, sustainability-oriented, end-user–inclusive innovation processes and identified end-users mostly as ‘concept refiners’. Thus, the tendency observed was to take a firm-driven approach to sustainable construction and to position consumers as adopters of innovations at the end of a linear diffusion process. Ball (1999) suggests that material innovations are recursive processes developed based on builders’ experiences. Similarly, consumer experiences from the use phase of building could guide the development of innovations.

Consumer-centric studies that focus on housing are still rare, and they produce a rather limited understanding. The few existing consumer studies on the innovative usage of wood in urban residential buildings have focused on topics such as willingness to pay and the effect of wood on consumers’ purchase behaviour (e.g. Luo et al., 2017, 2018) or consumers’ general attitudes and beliefs towards WMCs (Gold & Rubik, 2009; Høibø et al., 2015) before buying or moving into a wooden building. Research on consumers’ perceptions and experiences of wood as an urban construction material (e.g. Høibø et al., 2018; Lähtinen et al., 2019; Larasatie et al., 2018; Viholainen et al., 2020) indicates that although consumers assign positive meanings to it, they hold prejudices against and lack knowledge of the use of wood as a construction material. This lack of knowledge may hinder consumer-driven approaches in enhancing the sustainability of housing. However, these studies consider expert knowledge, such as information about the sustainability of wood and its technical properties, but overlook consumers’ experiential knowledge (e.g. Bäcklund et al., 2014) of construction materials in the innovation processes of housing.

Indeed, in the housing sector, appropriation of innovations, such as the adoption of sustainability-oriented materials in use, is currently not supported by active communication between consumers and the construction industry. The simultaneous pursuit of both environmental and socio-economic sustainability targets requires the understanding and development of not only the enabling technologies and materials but also housing appreciations and everyday user practices.

This study aims to shed light on the development of consumer-inclusive business approaches that enhance sustainability in the construction sector. To analyze the potential of consumer participation in innovation processes in the context of the sustainable housing/construction industry, we focus on the use of apartments, including activities performed at home, (user) experiences of consumers and the resident’s evolving relationship with their home. We ask: Which mechanisms can be identified that enable the inclusion of consumers (users, residents) in the innovation processes of housing, and how can social inclusiveness increase sustainability in housing production and consumption? Based on related literature (e.g. Barlow & Ozaki, 2003; Craig & Roy, 2004; Eriksson et al., 2015; Rinkinen & Jalas, 2017; Vischer, 2008), we consider that consumer inclusion could enhance the user–building relationship and increase consumer trust and dialogue with the construction industry, particularly in relation to the adoption of novel materials such as wood.

2. Consumer-inclusive approaches to business: innovation processes and business models

Several business scholars have identified the need to shift focus from a firm-centric production logic to adopting consumer-centric approaches at the core of the business (e.g. Breuer et al., 2018; Breuer & Ketabdar, 2012; Heinonen et al., 2010; Pynnönen et al., 2012; Svensson, 2003). However, Ball (1999; see also Barlow & Ozaki, 2003) argues that owing to structural barriers, such as market constraints and building regulations, the housebuilding sector cannot (automatically) adopt similar strategies as other sectors. Nevertheless, research calls for consumer focus, which in the housebuilding industry would mean improved quality of service, interest in customer needs and continuous improvement of policy (Barlow & Ozaki, 2003; Craig & Roy, 2004).

The inertia against changing the business logic may be attributable to a poor understanding of consumers, strong path-dependency or fear of costs and complexity. To shift the focus of production logic ‘from firm to consumer’ and to introduce a consumer-driven approach, business model scholars have employed various concepts and proposed models such as the consumer-driven value diffusion model (Svensson, 2003) and customer-driven (Pynnönen et al., 2012) and user-driven business models (e.g. Breuer & Ketabdar, 2012). Accordingly, research calls on businesses to solve the ‘real-life problems’ of people rather than focusing on producing and selling products; nevertheless, many firms struggle to understand and to meet the needs and expectations of their end-users (e.g. Svensson, 2003). Similarly, concepts such as consumers as co-creators (Vernette & Hamdi-Kidar, 2013) or co-developers of innovations (Jeppesen & Molin, 2003), end-user involvement (Eriksson et al., 2015), users shaping markets (Harrison & Kjellberg, 2016), consumer-driven market innovations (Branstad & Solem, 2020), consumption-driven market emergence (Martin & Schouten, 2014) and customer-dominant logic (Heinonen et al., 2010) pinpoint the essence of consumer focus for business development.

Based on the consumer-driven value diffusion model, Svensson (2003) criticizes the firm centricity of value creation and suggests the ‘ultimate consumer’ as the starting point of the value chain. He stresses that only consumers can create value for products and services, whereas firms only create costs for themselves. Pynnönen et al. (2012) argue that consumer needs are pivotal for innovative business model development and encourage firms to actively align business models with consumer preferences by proposing a four-phase process of developing and managing a consumer-driven business model. Mapping and defining consumer needs is an iterative process that aims to reach both the current and future needs of consumers.

Users have been identified as an innovation resource since the 1970s (Von Hippel, 1976). Studies on users as innovators recognize that consumers participate in developing solutions (Goodman et al., 2017; Jeppesen & Molin, 2003; Vernette & Hamdi-Kidar, 2013) and are assigned different types of agency, varying from autonomous innovators to regular and passive consumers (Busse & Siebert, 2018). However, the focus has been on developing singular products or service innovations rather than on better understanding and re-formulating the business logic. Recent literature on responsible research and innovation (RRI) underlines the essence of early stakeholder engagement (van de Poel et al., 2020). In an inclusive innovation process, technical innovators become responsive to societal needs, and societal actors become co-responsible for the innovation process (von Schomberg, 2013). Ideally, the political support for such technical innovations is democratic and participatory, with room for new voices to be included in the process (Stilgoe et al., 2013).

Sustainable business models (e.g. Bocken et al., 2014; Breuer et al., 2018) emphasize environmental and social value over economic value, and people’s roles as ‘users’, ‘citizens’ or ‘humans’ are often conceptually preferred over those of the consumer. Thus, the agential capacity of consumers needs to be clarified to develop their inclusion in sustainable business development. The analysis of the agential capacity of consumers is at the core of the study by Harrison & Kjellberg (2016), who recognize the five sub-processes in which consumers as users are involved as market actors; they qualify goods; fashion modes of exchange; configure actors/exchange agents; establish market norms, values and business models; and generate market responses. Branstad & Solem (2020) similarly propose three linear processes in the diffusion of innovations based on a literature review: the incumbent legitimator logic, the consumer activist logic and the market co-creator logic. Of these, the latter two assume consumers to be active, resourceful and initiative actors, whereas the first process considers incumbents as drivers of market change but recognizes the importance of other stakeholders in re-defining social norms. However, consumers are not by default resourceful actors. Martin & Schouten (2014), who employ the concept of consumption-driven market emergence, focus on linking consumers’ innovation resources and co-creation processes with their cultural communities and experiences. Similarly, service studies have examined consumers as ‘resource integrators’ who create value by engaging in activities (Baron & Harris, 2008).

Note that increasing consumer involvement is not a simple task without any problems. From the firm’s viewpoint, a key concern is related to increased costs and economic risks, also within the construction industry (Eriksson et al., 2015). From the consumer’s viewpoint, increasing involvement is not unproblematic either; participation requires consumers’ time and resources and may place them in the role of an unpaid worker (Rieder & Voß, 2010; Zwick et al., 2008) or shift responsibility to them – away from the actors in power in business and politics (Throne-Holst & Rip, 2011). Autio & Autio (2013) analyzed how e-services can support consumer involvement in the context of the construction industry and found that although consumers were activated by the playfulness of the virtual service, this did not fulfil their need for communication; they still had several suggestions on how to improve the services. Eriksson et al. (2015) argue that the difficulties in developing and maintaining sufficient dialogue between building industry professionals and users are attributable to the prevailing information asymmetry. In part owing to this issue, intermediators of knowledge brokering are called for to support sustainability-driven innovation processes in the construction industry (Vihemäki et al., 2020). In public administration, although the relationship with inhabitants’ experiential knowledge is framed by different approaches, inhabitants may be seen in a dual role as customers giving feedback about services and as legitimators of administrative processes. The bureaucratic logic in planning practices is challenged by questions about what is considered legitimate and appropriate knowledge, how much and whose experiential knowledge is collected and how it is utilized in decision-making (Bäcklund et al., 2014).

In fact, only few studies have combined an in-depth understanding of consumers’ daily life practices with their involvement in innovation processes (Hegger et al., 2011; Pantzar & Shove, 2010) or user-driven innovation with business model transformation (Baldassarre et al., 2017). By employing a similar framework – the relationship between sustainable innovations and a strategic shift of business towards consumer-orientation – in the context of water consumption and provision, Hegger et al. (2011) identify the strategic potential of engaging with consumers in an open, active dialogue. In addition, Baldassarre et al. (2017) argues that to develop sustainable value propositions, businesses need to adopt a thorough, dynamic and iterative perspective to identify and answer user needs.

By facilitating innovation processes, construction firms may discover business potential in the new solutions for the challenges in consumers’ everyday lives. This study focuses on the strategic approaches in WMC companies and investigates whether they are guided by in-depth consumer understanding. Our interpretation of the empirical data is based on the key theoretical notions in the literature (e.g. Baldassarre et al., 2017; Harrison & Kjellberg, 2016; Hegger et al., 2011; Warde, 2014). We introduce an iterative dialogue process to increase sustainability in the construction industry context in a consumer-inclusive manner (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Iterative co-development process of sustainable housing.

3. Focus group interview data and methods

To analyze consumer involvement in the context of WMC and living, empirical data were collected from a series of focus group discussions with both professionals and consumers. The use of focus groups allows capturing various consumer perspectives (Heiskanen et al., 2008), especially regarding topics on which participants have poorly formed attitudes and standpoints (Macnaghten, 2021; Throne-Holst & Rip, 2011). Focus groups also enable simultaneous data collection from multiple individuals and produce a synthesis of ideas (Onwuegbuzie et al., 2009). The aim was to create facilitating settings for new, synthesized ideas where participants could connect users with other actors in the WMC ecosystem.

We conducted seven focus group discussions (n = 27) with Finnish WMC residents, business representatives, researchers, architects and estate managers (see Table 1 for details). The group discussions were conducted within a year, which allowed researchers to iteratively learn about the phenomenon. We elicited data on 1) consumer (WMC resident) experiences and 2) the views of professionals in the WMC industry about user involvement. Macnaghten (2021) recommends reflecting on the context, framing, sampling, moderation, analysis and interpretation of focus groups. In our study, the context was everyday housing practices in resident groups and business, design and innovation practices in non-resident groups. The framing of the study was focus on both sustainability-driven low-carbon construction (WMC) and the business possibilities of consumer participation in the housing sector.

Table 1. Focus group discussions (n = 27).

Focus group	Participants (F = female/ M = male)	Date	Duration
#1 Residents A	n = 2 (2 F)	April 23, 2018	59 minutes
#2 Residents B	n = 7 (4 F, 3 M)	January 22, 2019	95 minutes
#3 Residents C	n = 4 (3 F, 1 M)	February 22, 2019	71 minutes
#4 Researchers	n = 4 (2 F, 2 M)	May 18, 2018	120 minutes
#5 Architects & city planning	n = 4 (1 F, 3 M)	August 30, 2018	113 minutes
#6 Firm representatives	n = 4 (1 F, 3 M)	February 4, 2019	65 minutes
#7 Housing estate managers	n = 2 (2 M)	March 8, 2019	84 minutes

The number of participants in the focus groups varied: non-resident groups comprised 2–4 and resident groups comprised 2–7 participants. This relatively small group size serves the purpose of expert knowledge discussions, particularly regarding people’s expertise in their everyday life (e.g. Onwuegbuzie et al., 2009). The researcher group comprised participants with research experience in WMC business, politics and sustainability and in consumer research on housing. The architect group comprised participants with various backgrounds in architecture and city planning as well as those currently working in firms, municipalities or education. The firm representatives group included managers representing firms affiliated in WMC, more precisely in property development, construction and wood element manufacturing. The estate managers managed several wooden multi-storey buildings. The resident group was a mix of people living in rental residences, in right-of-occupancy homes and in owner-occupancy homes; they had different opportunities to exert influence in their housing choices. Each resident group comprised participants of different WMC located in Helsinki area. Their residential buildings were constructed between 2015 and 2017.

The purpose of focus groups is to have open discussions, but a framework is needed to guide the discussions. This study employed the semi-structured thematic interview design (see Table 2). The thematic interview design guided moderation in all groups and was meant to function as not a rigid frame for the discussions but a guiding tool to help ensure that the pre-defined themes were sufficiently discussed. The themes were slightly modified to be relevant to each group. In particular, the resident groups discussed more freely owing to the moderation style and the social dimension behind the group dynamics – socializing with neighbours differs from the professional motivation of the business participants.

Table 2. Focus group discussion themes.

Non-resident expert focus groups	Resident focus group interviews
(i) role of wooden multi-storey construction in the bioeconomy and construction culture	(i) housing preferences and previous experiences
(ii) user/consumer/resident and sustainable living solutions	(ii) experiences of moving in and living in the multi-family timber building
(iii) end-user involvement	(iii) experiences of wood material in housing
(iv) future outlook and development	(iv) consumer involvement, opportunities to influence
free commentary	free commentary

All discussions had a moderator and an assistant moderator, except for one discussion with a resident group. Moreover, all discussions were held face-to-face, with the exception of two discussions where one participant virtually joined via online audio connection (Skype software). The discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed, and moderators took notes during the interviews. The transcripts were transferred to a qualitative data analysis software, Atlas.ti, for coding and pre-analysis.

The data were analyzed in an iterative manner. The initial themes and their sub-questions formed the basis for coding the data, which comprised the views, ideas and opinions of individuals and groups regarding WMC and user involvement. In the later phases of analysis, we focused on data analysis from the user involvement perspective and organized the data in four involvement types: i) one-way information flow from construction business to consumers, ii) dialogue and feedback from consumers regarding the construction business, iii) pursuits of new understanding about the (sustainable) everyday life of people, their practices and values, and iv) co-development of new, sustainability-enhancing practices and housing solutions. These involvement types were then organized as an iterative process to describe the continuity and inter-linkages of the innovation processes.

4. Results

4.1. Translating expert knowledge for consumers

Engaging consumers through open, active dialogue is strategically important when fostering sustainable innovations (Hegger et al., 2011). Accordingly, providing relevant and comprehensible information is essential to support consumer inclusion. However, our data analysis revealed that consumers are not fully recognized by the construction industry as active stakeholders who need to be communicated with:

F2: Once I asked one of the construction workers what kind of floor it would have, that I was moving in there and if he could quickly tell me because I didn’t know a thing. All I had was the layout.

F1: Yes. We didn’t get here anyway. You got in for the first time on the day you got the keys. [Only then did y]ou get to know how it was like.

F2: It was difficult to make any purchases either since you had no idea what it was like. –Group 1 (Residents A)

The information asymmetry (Eriksson et al., 2015) is attributable not only to the firms’ greater expert knowledge of construction practices but also to the fact that they hold considerable information about the case buildings, including the material choices and construction phase. However, consumers also possess knowledge that firms should be interested in: their living practices and housing needs. Group 4 (researchers) recognized this double gap between resident and professional knowledge:

Those who live there surely know the living aspect best, and constructors know about construction. It’s a good division of labour. It’s good to have dialogue. –Group 4 (Researchers)

Translating expert knowledge for consumers and facilitating dialogue between consumers and industry representatives (see also Hegger et al., 2011) by designing communication methods and appropriately using language is important. Moreover, the participants stressed that the language and communication methods should consider that consumers’ interests, information needs and background knowledge vary. Whereas some have an engineering background and ask for ‘real life-cycle calculations’ (Group 2: Residents B), others approach their homes with everyday expertise only.

The researchers (Group 4) called for comprehensible concepts when communicating with consumers. For example, they concluded that the concept of bioeconomy used to justify the importance of WMC was difficult for consumers and that it needed to be discussed with consumers differently from that with societal decision-makers.

Moreover, the analysis revealed significant communication-related trust issues in the construction industry. In this industry, constructors have regulated responsibilities to communicate with residents about issues such as repairs, but residents experience that firms do not prioritize these responsibilities:

F1: Everywhere that I have been talking about construction, I have criticized Company X because it has taken such bad care of these guaranteed fixes, so I cannot praise them in any way: like look at that lamp – it is still hanging there. (…)

F2: Here, look at this; it says two-year resident check form.

Others: Two years!

F1: I mean it has been [laughter] four years. –Group 3 (Residents C)

Residents of various newly built apartment buildings had experienced issues in getting the developer to finalize the project and take care of the repairs as they should have. One issue was that almost two years after moving in the residents had still not received the house manuals:

(W)e are actually still missing the resident folders, the operation and maintenance manuals of the housing association. All use- and maintenance-related issues have been kind of ignored, neglected, in the construction phase. Then, now, these guarantee repairs (sighs) are probably related to that. We have talked about it in the [housing association’s] board (…). It feels like they are not actively taking much care of these issues. They lack a service attitude. –Group 2 (Residents B)

Consequently, considerable missing information and gaps in communication existed between various actors. Residents had partial information about whom to contact regarding particular issues and whether they should consider wood materials or fire safety in their everyday life. Property managers also noted that residents were not always certain about whom they should contact in case of issues. Correspondingly, the residents hoped for clearer information on whom to contact and clear responsibilities between property managers, developers and constructors. In a building, information is not always evenly distributed among residents; for example, tenants might not know the decisions made during house committee meetings.

In fact, the focus group discussions conducted for this study acted as a forum to gain information and revealed the issues that were of the greatest interest to people. During discussions, residents shared information and became more aware of their apartments, the building and the property in general. For instance, some residents gained new information on the functions of their homes and shared spaces, such as their automatic light switches, automatic water adjustment knobs, underfloor heating and sprinkler systems. In addition to the functionality of living, consumers raised questions related to the environmental impacts of construction and how the natural movement of wood is managed.

Residents may have difficulty commenting on the building process unless they have sufficient knowledge of construction practices and technologies – which many of them may lack. For example, in rental houses, the tenant committee approves renovation budgets, and larger renovations always require the committee’s comments – committees are positioned to act as legitimators (Bäcklund et al., 2014). However, according to property managers, these committees rarely have the competence to comment on the main solutions.

The participants suggested methods to improve consumer involvement and information flow, including site visits, meetings with the architect, group discussions, condominium meetings, technological tools and facilitators. Residents appreciated the opportunity to visit the apartment before moving day and hoped to meet the architect at least once during construction. Technology was considered a promising means for consumer involvement by experts and architects: the potential of virtual reality (VR) headsets and 3 D printed samples to help consumers visualize the effects of various choices was discussed:

You get the sense of it [the new apartment] a bit better, instead of just looking at options from a PDF and ticking boxes. –Group 4 (Researchers)

More traditional means, such as ‘demonstration rooms’, were also mentioned. Researchers and architects recognized the need for an intermediator between the consumer and other actors during a construction project; this role could be fulfilled by the facilitator, an actor (person) present in the end-user interface since the time of purchase:

M2: Of those people who are on the computer typing the resident alterations, one should be replaced by a shuttle (person) who would be actively working at the end-user interface. From that point onwards when the apartment is sold. And it does not refer to only one building, but it is constant development. (…)

F2: Who would be a facilitator.

M2: Yes, facilitator in both directions. –Group 4 (Researchers)

Residents consider property managers as important intermediators in communication issues (Goodman et al., 2017). In their daily work, they engage with consumers by translating technical solutions for residents and finding technical solutions to their concerns. They conduct service work, which indicates the potential for a service approach in the construction industry in a wider sense.

4.2. Understanding living

A consumer-inclusive approach involves understanding consumers’ activities, needs, practices and lifestyles. When discussing the potential of consumers as co-developers, the researcher group questioned the construction industry’s current ability to understand consumers. Even if the industry were to shift to more consumer-centric approaches, they would not be at the core of the construction industry; a culture of reproduction and cautiousness still remains. This pertains even if new, interesting materials are in use, such as wood:

In wooden multi-storey buildings, they tend to copy this existing construction culture and not renew it or that strongly bring out these WMC’s, which are perhaps interesting aspects for residents. –Group 4 (Researchers)

Researchers and architects quite unanimously agreed that consumers’ views and experiences generally do not influence housing options as a whole, from zoning of the living environments to interior material choices:

The residents are very little heard in general (…); that is why our apartment building production repeats itself very much. –Group 5 (Architects and city planning)

Considering residents as paying customers was a typical discourse among firm representatives; however, note that consumers are not the only segment of customers for construction companies (see also Ball, 1999). Firms emphasized customers’ power: ‘We have to offer what the client wants’ (Group 6: Firm representatives). But whether they considered consumers or the construction developers as their main customers seemed to vary. Moreover, consumers could influence issues that were strongly connected to their budget:

F1: We did a broad consumer study a year ago (…). We got a lot of information on what our customers appreciate, what they want from housing and what they do not (…). We had price information included so that the consumers could also estimate what were the truly important options they would put their money into (…).

M2: It bothers me with these surveys that it is so damn easy to answer what you want. [The issue is that] there is no financial factor guiding the real decision-making, and [they are not asking] those actors who are actually carrying the financial responsibility for the decision. –Group 6 (Firm representatives)

The excerpt above showcases the firm-driven approach to consumer involvement; developing customer feedback systems received considerable interest. Further analysis of resident surveys and consumer studies reveals the difference between firm-driven and user-driven approaches. Whereas firms appreciate information about consumer preferences and their willingness to pay for different options, the architects called for deeper understanding of the functionality of homes in everyday use:

The constructions companies’ customer satisfaction surveys, moving-in surveys and surveys after one year of residency (…) focus on the selling process of the construction company and somewhat on the customer service, but the functionality of the apartment or feedback about the architectonic solutions doesn’t come back to us. It is not very systematic, at least among the bigger actors. –Group 5 (Architects and city planning)

Our results indicated that consumers have very few platforms to share their ideas or observations in a direct and informal way. Some consumers may also lack the desire to influence. The researchers approached the question of increasing consumer involvement by reflecting on themselves as housing consumers:

M2: It is important that by no means can we talk about consumers as a concise concept. Only a few can exert a lot of influence on their own housing. (…) There are a lot of consumers who cannot even if they would like to. (…)

F1: And there are also consumers who don’t so much want to influence, or maybe only where the apartment is and what it costs, but (…)

M1: I do think it is quite irrelevant for me what the apartment looks like, indoors. (…) I would be much more interested in the book I am holding in my hand. (…) I do not look at what a kitchen counter looks like, as long as it works.

F2: (…) I trust that there are things that professionals know better than me. –Group 4 (Researchers)

Consumer housing needs such as room sizes intertwine with their lifestyles, hobbies and household size. Increasing consumer inclusion requires an understanding of the plurality of consumers and residents as people, as the researchers (Group 4) pointed out above. Moreover, openness to continuous learning from case to case, from use phase to design, is at the core of consumer inclusion processes. When to engage with consumers and what kind of dialogue is needed before and after moving in should be carefully considered. Property managers see the timeline of involvement differently from construction companies:

(I)t engages with the apartment and creates thoughts like, ‘this is my home and I can affect things’. Absolutely, I think that quite soon after residents have moved in, involvement should be kicked off. –Group 7 (Property managers)

One way to improve the functionality of housing is to offer services to consumers that support their living. In fact, according to the experts, added services such as cleaning might become important when choosing an apartment. Housing-related services were also discussed by property managers who named self-servicing post offices, online purchasing, advertising on staircase screens and remote temperature monitoring as future aspects of their working environment.

Some firm representatives have made efforts to understand the functionality of buildings and apartments and are already continuously developing processes. One way of gaining information about the use of apartments is to take responsibility for the property management of a constructed building:

M3: We stay as owners and property managers of all the buildings we have produced. That is, in most of the buildings, we also have apartments for a longer time, and in this way, we gain user experience and user feedback during several years of property management and know the wishes of the residents. And in this way, we have tried to improve our, let’s say, materials and equipment and accessories in the apartments. –Group 6 (Firm representatives)

In addition to identifying the incremental improvement possibilities, firm representatives continued the discussion and showed interest in general value discussions regarding living:

F1: People long for the everyday things in their living that make everyday life easy. (…) In general, it is the home and the everyday life that functions there, and that I can nicely afford and save a little to do something else too, that’s it. (…) From my point of view, involvement should be a bigger part of [general] value discussions to recognize how people wish to live and what they hope for from their living environments rather than focusing on single building projects. –Group 6 (Firm representatives)

Such approaches show that some industry actors are developing an understanding of living. However, the residents felt that no one was interested in their everyday life issues such as the lack or misplacement of storage space. As many of the firms in the WMC business ecosystem are small or middle-sized, they regard their own capability to change the industry’s operating models as limited.

The examples above suggest that developing consumer feedback surveys is insufficient if support for the consumer agential capacity is lacking (Harrison & Kjellberg, 2016). Giving feedback is laborious; it should not be taken as self-evident that consumers can and are motivated to do so. Indeed, the group of architects and city planning offered service design thinking on all levels as a conceptual solution. This would also mean a shift from asking for feedback to trying to understand the everyday activities of people.

4.3. Co-developing sustainable housing

Although consumers are expected to drive the changes towards sustainability, certain issues impede their ability to exert significant influence. One of the shared main concerns is related to the aforementioned time span of consumer inclusion; another is the limited understanding of consumer involvement in the industry, which leads to a lack of innovation in developing inclusion methods:

M2: Good customer service by a professional constructor does not mean that everything is possible, but good customer service is such that, here you have a standard product in Company Y that is optimized according to customer needs. (…) It leads to a horrible mess if everyone can influence everything and everything is customizable. (…)

M1: I feel that the challenge there is that if we discuss something today, then maybe the city plan is ready and accepted in five years. Five years from there half is built, five years from there it is completed. It is such a long time. (…) Opinions change many times within 15 years. –Group 6 (Firm representatives)

One of the main targets highlighted by the firm representatives was the pursuit to facilitate and manage consumer involvement, such as restricting consumers from having too much influence on aspects for which they felt consumer influence was unnecessary. They seemed to be lacking the sophisticated approaches (Barlow & Ozaki, 2003, p. 91) necessary for turning consumer wants and needs into releasable products. However, the architects showed enthusiasm in conducting even major layout changes, such as relocating dividing walls or adding a loft, as long as the timing was right. The researchers (Group 4) seemed to share the understanding that a general industry practice is to avoid resident contact and involvement, believing that it would inevitably raise building costs. They also indicated that the construction industry is currently not offering solutions for sustainable housing and living. The sustainability of consumers’ daily life is determined not by the frame material of building but by a wide range of elements that support the realization of sustainable daily life, such as the use of renewable electricity, access to public transport or ability to charge electrical vehicles or recycle all materials:

The elements of sustainable housing in consumers’ everyday life are still mostly missing. (…) (C)onsumers can influence in rare occasions, at least in a way that it would have societal significance; (…) on frame solutions, they do not really have any influence. –Group 4 (Researchers)

In all non-resident groups, there was consensus that zoning fundamentally defines frame materials and that consumers have no ability to influence these. The researchers and residents agreed that the ecological arguments regarding WMC should not be considered self-evident, that sustainable living should be approached in a more comprehensive manner and that the arguments of being more eco-friendly need to be justified and preferably certified by a reliable external actor. In fact, during the discussions, the residents became interested in sustainability issues, such as the origin of the wood used in their residential building. They had numerous ideas on how to improve the sustainability of living:

But it would be nice if one could live ecologically. And in a financially sustainable way too. Yeah. Now there aren’t any solar panels or anything else like that, but that could also be one criterion to think about. –Group 2 (Residents B)

Another viewpoint on the increased sustainability of housing is related to the social equity of housing, including the costs of living. In general, all groups shared similar thoughts about the factors that affect housing choices; affordability (price), convenience of everyday life (location) and functionality of the home (layout) were identified as the main factors. Some groups discussed these in more detail. For example, property managers noted that living values change during phases of life. The lifestyles and hobbies and the relevant housing needs of residents are strongly connected to their household size and family composition. In fact, the architects presented that, in the future, more emphasis should be given to the functionality of the apartment and the general satisfaction in the entire living area (i.e. zoning solutions). They also saw potential in alternative co-operative construction practices, such as group co-operative construction, alliance building and crowdfunding. However, these future visions were presented as bold ideas rather than fully reflected solutions.

Considering the living area a whole, the residents showed considerable interest in influencing yard solutions. Nevertheless, they questioned whether they could have reached consensus on common matters: ‘three choices and a vote’ was suggested as a solution. However, when discussing the choices related to the interior materials of their own apartments, some preferred full freedom of choice to an array of choices (Group 3).

As discussed earlier, consumers are a heterogeneous group with various preferences; in the resident group discussions, some expressed strong desires for influence, some less or none and some hoped for an array of choices, whereas others wanted full freedom. The emerging role of technology was also present, as sometimes choices were made based on technology. Technology can also create difficulties in influencing and choosing. For example, an elder resident’s home planning was hampered because she was unable to reach the web-based information needed to choose surface materials. This connects to the beginning of the iteration cycle (see Figure 1), as new methods, technologies and solutions need to be carefully communicated to people, user experiences need to be analyzed, and the consumers’ everyday life needs to be continuously understood.

5. Conclusions

This study sheds light on how to turn consumer inclusion into strategic potential for promoting innovation in sustainable housing. In response to calls for both increasing consumer focus (Barlow & Ozaki, 2003; Craig & Roy, 2004) and sustainability (Baldassarre et al., 2017; Kriese & Scholz, 2011) in the construction industry, our study contributes to understanding the co-development of a consumer-inclusive and sustainability-driven construction business as an iterative process.

One contribution of our study is the finding that consumer experiences from interaction with their dwellings are valuable inputs for further business development in the form of an iterative dialogue process (see Figure 1). Our study recognizes the limitations of linear innovation approaches that allow consumers to be assigned limited roles such as tester or concept refiner (Goodman et al., 2017). Thus, we propose a cyclical approach where the use phase is the starting point of new innovation iterations. The cyclical approach draws on the identified strategic potential in engaging with consumers in an open, active dialogue (Hegger et al., 2011) and the thorough, dynamic and iterative perspective that construction businesses need to adopt or to identify and answer user needs as well as to develop sustainable value propositions (Baldassarre et al., 2017).

Our results indicate that the construction industry’s traditional approach of understanding consumer involvement almost solely as home-specific, last-minute customization wishes (e.g. Schoenwitz et al., 2012) in the construction planning phase is becoming outdated; some companies have already recognized the opportunities to learn from residents’ living experiences, such as the dialogues within the Positive Footprint Housing process (Gromark et al., 2021). Inclusion, based on a more open dialogue with consumers and their experiential knowledge, can open up new opportunities to create added value by innovating more sustainable everyday solutions. We also argue that with the current high-energy efficiency in new residential construction, to achieve sustainable housing, more attention should be paid to material aspects, which are only to some extent covered in the literature (Lima et al., 2021). However, building technology and material-based opinion-making of consumers is a complex topic, and the related expert knowledge for consumers needs to be better translated. Facilitating active dialogue between consumers and industry representatives is essential and a continuous development area.

In this study, we emphasized the consumer perspective; thus, instead of planning and design, we focused on the phase of using the home, in which consumers gain their experiences. However, this setting has limitations. As consumers are experts of living and have experiential knowledge on the solutions that support their daily life, they do not master the technical feasibility of their ideas and should not be assigned the responsibility of making decisions beyond their power. Thus, translating consumer experiences into concrete business actions may be complicated. A similar issue is recognized with other sustainability-driven technical novelties that touch consumers’ daily life, such as nanotechnologies (Jansma et al., 2022). Thus, consumer involvement requires good dialogue between industry and residents.

Although focus groups are efficient for generating data that comprise plural views and ideas (Heiskanen et al., 2008), they have limitations. The social interaction aspect of the focus group method has both pros and cons; it encourages people to discuss a topic beyond their everyday thinking (Throne-Holst & Rip, 2011). In our study, consumers reflected on their relationship with construction materials, constructing sustainability among the social meanings of home. However, the views and opinions of others in the group, cultural codes or non-disclosure agreements can restrict participants from expressing innovative ideas. Although the discussions had an environment of trust, those working in business, in particular, might not disclose all their views and ideas in discussions where the other participants might be their co-operators or competitors. Thus, we could speculate on how the discussions would have been different with other participants. Nevertheless, we are content with the sampling and plurality of the views we gained and find that combining groups of different experts strengthened the data.

This study focused on the potential of consumer inclusion to enhance the sustainability of housing in the context of sustainability-driven novel material solutions in the construction industry. Future research is encouraged to shed light on the other aspects of sustainability, such as the socio-economic aspects that are crucial in sustainable housing. In addition to developing new production, focus on retrofit businesses and their use of experiential knowledge could further advance the sustainability of housing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Finland: ORBIT, Grant Number: 307480; SRC: DECARBON-HOME, Grant Number: 335241.