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Prefabricated construction (PC) can benefit construction industry due to its high efficiency, energy saving, consumption reduction and safety. However, the high capital cost is a critical challenge hindering its development in China. The collaboration of PC stakeholders is conducive to improving cost management efficiency and optimizing resource allocation which has been ignored in previous studies. Therefore, this study aims to explore the collaboration paths of stakeholders in the process of solving critical cost influencing factors (CIFs) of PC to reduce costs.

Firstly, 25 CIFs and five main stakeholders that affect PC capital cost were identified through literature research and expert interviews. Then, questionnaires were used to investigate the relationship between stakeholders and CIFs from the perspectives of three stakeholder attributes of proximity, attitude and power, respectively. Finally, based on the survey data, three stakeholder-CIF networks from three attributes perspective and a comprehensive network were constructed and used for subsequent social network analysis.

(1) Stakeholders mainly show willingness and potential to collaborate on organization and management factors; (2) More stakeholders pay attention to incentive policies and the setting of prefabrication rates and assembly rates, while all stakeholders have the right to facilitate information and resource sharing in the PC supply chain; (3) The comprehensive network shows a core-periphery structure. As core stakeholders, contractor, designer and manufacturer are more likely to actively manage the 14 core CIFs.

This paper innovatively combined stakeholder and cost management in PC, and used two-mode network based on three stakeholder perspectives to reveal the collaboration potential and motivation of stakeholders in PC cost management. The findings not only provide guidance for stakeholders to find potential partners and optimize resource allocation in solving specific cost issues, but also facilitate stakeholders' sustainable collaboration to achieve PC's cost performance.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the policy instruments used by the China's Government on prefabricated construction (PC) development, with the aim to clarify the pattern and discover the focus of the policy instruments using the methods of bibliometric analysis and content analysis.

Through a thorough screening by all researchers, 25 policies were identified from 1995 to 2021 were selected and analysed. The external attribute analysis clarified the issuing year, organisation, and the format of each policy. The content analysis was adopted firstly to analyse the policy instrument. An analysis framework including environmental instruments, supply instruments and demand instruments was applied in categorising and counting of each policy instrument. The bibliometric analysis was then carried out to extract keywords of the policy instruments, construct a co-word network and complete the cluster analysis.

The results indicate that the policies lack consistency and had relatively low authority. The results of content analysis show that the policy system relies heavily on environmental and supply instruments, whilst the use of demand instruments seems to be grossly inadequate. The results of the bibliometric analysis identify the core ideas of each policy instrument category, discuss the existing problems and then put forward the corresponding countermeasures.

This study comprehensively and systematically analysed the policy instruments on facilitating the development of PC in China which broaden the research perspectives of the PC development by introducing the methods of political science. The research findings afford helpful information for future policy adjustments and elucidate the effective delivery of policies to facilitate PC development for developing countries.

This study provides an in-depth understanding of policy instruments used by China's Government on PC development. By integrating the policy instrument analysis framework into the mixed methods of content analysis and bibliometric analysis, this study provides an innovative way to conduct policy instrument analysis.