In this study, we analyze domestic material consumption (DMC) in building sector and employed an index decomposition analysis method to find out the driving force of material consumption during 1996-2009. We also conducted semi-parametric analysis to estimate the relationship between urban area change and DMC change. The results reveled several findings: (1) the contribution rate of per capita GDP growth was arrived at 102.54%, it was the main driver of growth in material consumption of building construction. (2) the increase in the DMC is one of the reasons that lead to the increase of farmland transformation into urban area, but the transformations from water, grassland and wetland to urban areas decreased.