Building Security Cost Determinants within the Built-environment

Abstract

Aims: Building cost more currently, and a significant amount of such cost may be caused by increased expenditure on building security. However, various factors constituting the cost of building security are yet to be established. This lack of knowledge has led to an investigation to discover the determinants of building security cost within the built-environment. Study Design: The study used quantitative phase of sequential exploratory research and employed phenomenological research design for it data collection and analysis. Place and Duration of Study: This study is part of an ongoing PhD research project in School of Housing Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, between 2013 and 2015. Field work was conducted in Nigeria between October 2013 and March 2014. Methodology: The study employed quantitative research technique and relies on questionnaires to source 297 samples at 88% response rate, primarily from respondents. The validation was carried through panel of experts, while analysis of data was conducted with the aid software package for social science (SPSS 20). Results: The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy of all items met the minimum requirement of 0.5, and the diagonal measure of sampling adequacy (DMSA) for all items under each factor were greater than 0.5. The Cronbach’s alpha value ranges from 0.6 to 0.8 and above, while skewness and kurtosis were within the stipulated given ranges of ±2.0 and ±10.0 respectively. The results indicate that the instrument is reliable and the data depicts reasonable normality. Conclusion: Therefore, this study has gone to some extents in enhancing the understanding of determinants factors of building security cost. It reveals that building security cost is influenced by security measures and building characteristics. It provides an evidence that evaluation and control of building security cost relies on giving due consideration to security measures and building characteristics.