Construction is closely related to people's lives and public activities. With regard to issues of energy conservation, emission reduction, and sustainable development put forth, the word "green" is increasingly used in the construction industry. Green construction is an inevitable requirement for the sustainable development of the construction industry. In addition, the government regulation mechanism is also the key to the establishment and development of green construction. Thus, on the basis of evolutionary game theory, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model of developers, general contractors, and the government. Then, the evolutionary stability strategies under different conditions are discussed. Lastly, the evolution mechanism in the game process of the green construction system and the influence of relevant parameters on the evolution path of the game model are analyzed through numerical simulation. The results show that (1) when consumer preferences change, the evolutionary stability strategies also change. Consumer preference plays a positive role in the establishment and development of green construction, but a certain increase in consumer preference will lead to free-rider behavior. (2) The government's control mechanism can not only effectively mobilize the enthusiasm of enterprises to participate but also effectively inhibit the free-rider behavior of enterprises; however, it cannot completely prevent the occurrence of free-rider behavior. (3) On the one hand, the government can advocate green consumption to promote the improvement of consumers' green preferences; on the other hand, enterprises actively carry out technological innovation and equipment advances to enhance the likelihood that consumers will embrace green preferences to achieve the optimal ESS. This study not only provides good guidance for developers and general contractors to make optimal strategic choices under different consumers' green preferences, but also provides a reference for the government to formulate reasonable regulatory policies. At the same time, it promotes the development of green construction and further promotes environmental protection.
Keywords: construction industry; consumers’ green preference; evolutionary game theory; government supervision; green construction.