Towards social-welfare and confidence optimizing approach to examining barriers for digital transformation in SMCEs

Digital transformation (DT) stands as a pivotal technological revolution that has emerged as a critical development strategy across industries for its effectiveness in fostering competitive advantages. However, the adoption of DT within the construction industry remains notably lagging, and small and medium-sized construction enterprises (SMCEs), constrained by limited resources, antiquated technologies, and constrained risk tolerance compared to large enterprises, encounter heightened impediments in undertaking DT. Current research on DT in the construction industry focuses predominantly on large enterprises or the industry holistically. These studies allocate relatively diminished focus to the imprecision of expert opinions and the impact of expert behavioral factors on decision outcomes. We construct a barriers examination framework aimed at ranking the barriers for DT in SMCEs. The proposed framework comprises two pivotal components: (1) the technical, organizational, and environmental barriers for DT in SMCEs; (2) an enhanced collective opinion generation paradigm driven by the social-welfare and confidence optimizing approach. Following the proposed framework, experts are tasked with assessing 14 barriers based on 5 levels of importance. The probability theory approach is applied to model expert opinions as probability distribution functions (PDFs) to reduce the inherent imprecision of expert opinions. The proposed social-welfare and confidence optimizing approach is utilized for aggregating individual PDFs to generate collective PDFs representing the importance level of each barrier. An empirical survey on SMCEs in Wuhan proves the feasibility and validity of the proposed barriers examination framework and indicates that the largest barrier to implement DT for SMCEs in Wuhan is the lack of standards and regulations, followed by the lack of clear strategic planning. The study not only summarizes the barriers for DT in SMCEs, but also adopts the socialwelfare and confidence optimizing approach to improve the objectivity and reliability of the collective opinion, therefore, the conclusion can provide a reference for SMCEs to implement DT.