- Title
- The importance of occupant behaviour for better pro-environmental decisions
- Creator
- Far, Claire
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Several recent studies have revealed that while nearly half of the building’s energy consumption is related to building envelope characteristics and utilised equipment, the remaining crucial half is influenced by building occupant behaviour. Therefore, building occupant energy consumption related behaviour can either significantly improve the energy efficiency of buildings or simply makes the whole process inefficient. Consequently, in achieving energy conservation goals, focusing purely on technological advancements without considering building occupant’s energy related behaviour will not be adequate. As reported by number of researchers in the past decade, the most highlighted gap in the literature is related to understanding the underlying social norms and priorities as well as the behaviours of households when approaching to modification of thermal comfort to increase energy efficiency and sustainability in their homes. Accordingly, there is a lack of research that covers thoroughly the different aspects of occupant behaviour as well as the latest developments in this field. The need for data collection and interpretation on building occupant behaviour in relation to thermal energy consumption has been explicitly highlighted in current literature. To address this need, this thesis, has investigated the nature of occupant behaviour leading toward an intention to modify thermal comfort to appreciate the possibility of reducing energy consumption in residential buildings. In doing that, a conceptual framework that presents the relationships between the elements of occupant behaviour has been proposed. Following the positivism research philosophy adopted, a quantitative research design has been employed within this research to direct collection and analysis of data. Utilising online survey method, online questionnaire has been designed and launched to gather required data for data analysis and interpretation. Accordingly, data from different households located in three densely populated suburbs of Sydney Metropolitan area have been collected for the online survey. Collected information in the online survey have been used to examine and analysis occupant behaviour of the respondents using Stata v17 software by capturing the main constructs of the proposed conceptual framework. Based on the results of data analysis and interpretation in this study, it has become apparent the proposed conceptual framework is a valid and reliable model which can explain and model occupant pro-environmental behaviour in residential buildings and is capable of being used functionally for studying occupant pro-environmental behaviour towards modification of thermal comfort to reduce energy use in residential buildings. It has also been revealed that building occupant pro-environmental behaviour of the survey respondents has been average and uncertain. Having an average and uncertain level of occupant pro-environmental behaviour has been found to be a direct outcome of having an average and uncertain level of occupant intention to act pro-environmental which is in turn directly influenced by the average and uncertain level of occupant environmental awareness. Therefore, if improvement of occupant pro-environmental behaviour in existing residential buildings is expected, efforts should be made to enhance environmental awareness of the building occupant to make improvement on occupant intention to act pro-environmental and eventually increase occupant pro-environmental behaviour toward an intention to modify thermal comfort as a possible means to reduce energy use in existing residential buildings.
- Subject
- occupant behaviour; energy efficiency; Sydney residential buildings; pro-environmental behaviour; sustainable design; sustainable architecture
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1481566
- Identifier
- uon:50746
- Rights
- Copyright 2023 Claire Far
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 378 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |