Saudi expert survey maps barriers to living-wall implementation

An expert survey of Saudi Arabia’s building industry found that operational and behavioral obstacles had the strongest statistical association with barriers to implementing living walls in construction projects. The study, reported in Scientific Reports, used partial least squares structural equation modeling to assess the reported barriers. Operational and behavioral barriers produced a standardized path coefficient of β = 0.380, while resource and structural barriers followed at β = 0.372; both paths were significant at p ≤ 0.001.

Four of the five substantive barrier categories examined in the model were significantly associated with living-wall implementation barriers. Integration and complexity barriers had a coefficient of β = 0.303, and awareness and economic barriers had a coefficient of β = 0.278, with both paths also significant at p ≤ 0.001. Maintenance and technical barriers differed from the other categories: their coefficient was β = 0.097 and their path was not statistically significant, with p = 0.227. These coefficients quantify relationships within the fitted model and do not establish that the associated factors caused particular project outcomes.

The researchers treated the identified barriers as formative constructs, meaning that each constituent indicator was expected to make a distinct contribution to its broader category. They assessed collinearity among those indicators using variance inflation factors. All reported VIF values were below 3.5, the study’s stated threshold for checking that the indicators retained distinct contributions. The model also demonstrated internal consistency: Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability met the required thresholds, while average variance extracted values exceeded 0.50, or 50% of the variation specified in the assessment criteria.

This was an expert-survey study focused on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s building industry, and its findings therefore concern the barriers represented by the surveyed experts and the measures included in the model rather than a direct comparison of completed living-wall projects. The results indicate that the modeled implementation problem was associated with a broad set of operational, behavioral, resource, structural, integration, complexity, awareness and economic factors, while the maintenance-and-technical category did not show a statistically significant path in the reported model. The authors present the findings as a basis for policy guidance intended to support living-wall adoption in Saudi Arabia and potentially other Gulf nations, but the supplied results do not evaluate the effects of any particular policy intervention.

Subject of Research: Expert-survey analysis of living-wall implementation barriers in Saudi Arabian construction projects

Article Title: Barriers to living walls implementation in Saudi Arabian sustainable construction projects: A PLS-SEM approach

Article References: Alaboud, N. S. (2026). Barriers to living walls implementation in Saudi Arabian sustainable construction projects: A PLS-SEM approach. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-76473-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-76473-1

Keywords: living walls, Saudi Arabia, sustainable construction, PLS-SEM, implementation barriers, expert survey, structural equation modeling, building industry, Barriers, living, walls, implementation