PUBLIC AWARENESS AND RESOURCES AVAILABILITY AS DETERMINANTS OF THE ADOPTION OF PREFABRICATED BUILDING TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

A rise in the level of adoption of prefabricated building technology in Kenya has revamped the Kenyan construction industry and brought benefits from the advantages accruable from such technologies. There is need to gauge the level of adoption of innovative construction strategies in Kenya which can be achieved by assessing the determinants of the level of adoption of prefabricated building technology in the housing sector. This survey sought to find out how public awareness and resources availability affects the adoption of prefabricated building technology in a case of National Housing Corporation. The study adopted a descriptive research design targeting the key public in the prefabricated construction industry in Kenya through questionnaires. The study sample is 71 users of prefabricated construction technology and 12 prefab experts at the NHC. Structured questionnaires were used for data collection. The data analysis was done for qualitative and quantitative data, while OLS regression was done to ascertain the relationships among the variables under study. The study found that public awareness and resource availability showed positive statistically significant relationship with the level of adoption of prefabricated building technology, confirming that improvement in public awareness and resource availability would result in the improvement in level of adoption of prefabricated building technology. The study therefore recommends that NHC, Financial Institutions, and other relevant government bodies should guide their policy development towards improving access and adoption of prefabricated building by instituting policies that would improve on the state of public awareness and resource availability.