*2.1. Literature Review*

The literature review was focused on establishing the state-of-the-art about the sustainable business strategies that are implemented by construction and non-construction companies worldwide.

#### *2.2. Survey Design and Application*

The instrument used in this research was a survey that collects socio-demographic data (5 questions) and the implementation of sustainable strategies in construction firms (40 questions). The survey was designed not only to provide a diagnosis of the strategies used in Chile's construction industry, through comparison, association and significance but also to determine companies' priorities in terms of the application of sustainable strategies. The socio-demographic variables that are collected are main business activity, position of the interviewee, experience in years, number of employees, and turnover of the construction firms. The 40 questions are measured with a Likert scale (Never, Hardly Ever, Sometimes, Almost Always and Always). The responses in the Likert scale are scored between 1 (Never) and 5 (Always).

The sample design considers a sub-group of the Chilean construction companies that are registered with the Chilean Chamber of Construction (CChC). The survey was administered online for 5 months through the website www.e-encuesta.com. During this period, 75 CEOs of construction companies answered the survey, which corresponds to 30.6% of the construction companies included in the CChC database. The answered surveys were statistically processed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (IBM, New York, NY, USA) to obtain the following statistical results: descriptive analysis, estimate of the instrument's psychometric features, association tests, variance analysis and multiple comparisons.

The measurement instrument was designed to collect information in the following five dimensions, which are divided into 12 sub-dimensions or sustainable construction strategies (Figure 3) and 3 opinion questions.

The measured dimensions and sub-dimensions are set forth below.


#### *2.3. Statistical Test and Analysis*

The answered surveys were statistically processed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (SPSS, release 20). The main statistical analysis and tests were:


**Figure 3.** Sustainable strategies in the context of the organization. Overview of strategies leading to the creation of value in the sustainable business model.
