Metaheuristic game theory for fuzzy weight consolidation in Internet of Things (IoT) adoption decisions for construction safety

The construction industry suffers from high accident rates and inadequate safety management. Internet of Things (IoT) integration holds promise for improving safety. However, research has focused on adoption barriers without exploring key success factors, and many rely on a single weighting technique, which can yield method-sensitive priorities and limited actionable guidance for implementation planning and resource allocation. To address these gaps, this study proposes a robust decision-support framework for IoT integration that identifies and ranks barriers and success factors and derives consensus priorities by integrating multiple Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) variants with a game-theoretic, metaheuristic optimization model, thus mitigating method sensitivity issues. A literature review and a survey of 22 experts from China and Hong Kong support the study using a novel two-module approach. In the first module, weight computation utilizes an improved FAHP and its extensions to evaluate the significance of IoT-related factors. The second module aggregates these weights with metaheuristic algorithms integrated into a hybrid game theory model that minimizes discrepancies among methods and yields consolidated priorities and normalized coefficients. Comparative analysis shows that the particle swarm optimization-based model achieves the most accurate weight distributions with deviations of 7.35E-02 for technological barriers, 6.81E-03 for economic barriers, and 6.72E-03 for technical and operational success factors. Other models perform best for operational, construction management, and organizational culture categories. Results indicate that incompatibility among technologies is the most critical technological barrier, while the impact on productivity due to wearable devices constitutes the most prominent economic barrier. Furthermore, regarding the success factors, enhancing customer satisfaction is the leading customer and market-driven driver, facilitating knowledge sharing among organizations is the most influential organizational and cultural enabler. These insights offer actionable guidance for industry stakeholders and demonstrate the potential of IoT technologies to enhance construction safety and overall project performance.