Policies to enhance the drivers of green housing development in China

China's housing sector has a major impact on global energy consumption due to the rapid urbanization. Although the Chinese government launched a wide variety of policies to encourage green building practices, only 1592 housing projects had been green-certified by the end of 2015, representing a small percentage in China's booming housing market and with very uneven distribution across cities. Based on a panel dataset of all the cities at the prefecture level or above in China for the period from 2008 to 2015, this paper employs Tobit model and Cox proportional hazard model to investigate the drivers of green housing development. Besides the factors associated with economic returns to green investment, the empirical results suggest that some policy instruments have effectively stimulated green practices in the private housing sector, such as land-related policies, priority in enterprise qualification inspection and upgrade, and demand-side subsidies. This paper also highlights the spillover effects of the government's green practices in public housing, implying that governments can also influence the building sector as leading actors. These findings could help governments create more effective and efficient policies to boost green housing development.