Knowledge Mapping of Homeowners’ Retrofit Behaviors: An Integrative Exploration

Abstract

Energy retrofitting of existing residential buildings has a great potential to achieve a sustainable future. One important way to reach this potential is to understand homeowners’ retrofit behaviors due to their crucial roles in retrofit adoption and retrofit effects. Despite many attempts, researchers and governments still know less about the holistic profile of homeowners’ retrofit behaviors, which brought little success in trigging renovation activities and achieving expected retrofit effects. This study tries to fill this research gap by a comprehensive review of the body of existing research. A keyword-based scientometric analysis was performed based on a set of 152 journal articles. By further refining keywords, main research domains pertaining to investment-decision-energy behaviors, policy instruments, retrofit types, construction & services, and methods & methodologies were mapped to show relevant research knowledge and research topics. Based on these research results, a further integrated framework was developed, which explains homeowners’ retrofit behaviors in a systematic way of cross-disciplinary knowledge interactions. Furthermore, implications for retrofit policies in existing buildings were provided. This study is useful for facilitating future research to deepen homeowners’ retrofit behaviors, and also provides valuable references for policy makers to successfully promote home energy retrofit.