Weightings of decision-making criteria for the maintenance of multi-storey residential buildings in Hong Kong

In many well-developed cities, residential buildings in old city centres are deteriorating very quickly. Hong Kong is of no exception because urban decay has long drawn great concerns of the society in Hong Kong. The majority of residential buildings are high-rise and multi-storey. In these buildings, a large number of homeowners are involved in the maintenance of the communal elements in the buildings, and difficulties in balancing the interests of different stakeholders in deciding on the way forward for a maintenance project are common. In this light, it is interesting to study what the decision-making criteria are for the maintenance of different multi-storey residential buildings in the city. Through literature review, a set of decision-making criteria were sorted out. The criteria were then organized in a hierarchical structure. Based on the data obtained from a pilot study, the weightings or relative importance of these criteria perceived by 56 homeowners in the Western District, Hong Kong were evaluated using a non-structural fuzzy decision support system. The analysis results showed that cost affordability of the maintenance work and existing conditions of the building generally dominated the decision making process. Yet, people living in buildings with fewer flats put greater weights onto people-related decision factors (e.g. expected duration for the household to hold the property and social cohesiveness), compared with those living in larger-scale buildings. These findings implied that people’s perceptions towards the relative importance of the decision-making criteria for housing maintenance changed with the characteristics of their places of residence. Practical implications for public administrators in formulating the strategies to promote housing maintenance then follow.