Concrete Guidance? : An empirical study examining attitudes in regard to The Act of Climate declarations and its influence on the construction industry. 

Abstract: The construction industry is one of Sweden's largest industry emitters, an industry operating in the centre of cities worldwide, day and night. In order to achieve a more sustainable future and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the construction industry must be less pollutive. On 1 of January 2022, the Swedish government implemented new regulation, The Act of Climate Declarations, within the construction industry, to enhance the knowledge of the climate impact of new buildings. The purpose of this study is to examine the implementation process of said regulation, its implications on concerned industry actors, and to investigate whether current restrictions would benefit from more strict policies or not. In this study, Institutional theory has been applied to analyse conducted empirical data to examine how the regulation has influenced different actors behaviours and practises. The result shows that the regulation has been widely accepted within the industry. Furthermore, this study shows that barriers are mainly found regarding the narrow scope the regulations require. Opportunities in regards are that actors are hopeful that the regulations could be a first step toward a more sustainable industry at large. These findings have added evidence that adds to current literature on future sustainability investments, such as limit-values and new proposals communicated by the Swedish Government while this thesis was written.