Abstract
Changing energy consumption behavior is a promising strategy to enhance household energy efficiency and to reduce carbon emission. Understanding the role of psychological and demographic factors in the context of energy-conservation behaviors is critical to promote energy-saving behaviors in buildings. This study first proposes a theoretical framework built on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Based on the collected survey data from 207 families (553 residents) in three communities in Xi’an, a typical city in northwest China, the research examines how three standard TPB predictors, namely attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, as well as their interactive effects and three socio-demographic factors (i.e., house ownership, education and household income) influence building occupants’ energy-saving intention at home. Through structural equation modeling and keyword analysis, this study reveals that two interaction terms, namely attitude and subjective norms, as well as attitude and perceived behavior control, significantly influence building occupants’ energy-saving intention. Furthermore, this study implies that household income may positively associate with occupants’ energy-saving intention. The model in this study would be conducive to architects and property managers to mitigate severe building energy overuse problem in design and operation stages. Based on a qualitative analysis, the study then discusses the limitations of the study and further research direction. The results of this study would be conducive to building designers and operators to develop customized architectural or informatic interventions and to mitigate the severe energy overuse problem in the residential sector in northwest China.
Highlights
The growing global energy consumption has raised serious concerns over resource exhaustion and a series of environmental problems
This paper considers the subjective expectation in financial benefits as a factor contributing to household energy-saving attitude, while most of previous studies treat it as an independent factor [37,38]
The expected financial benefit seems be important to household energy-saving intention, the qualitative analysis result is in line with Bergquist et al (2019) and De Dominicis et al (2019), who noted that social motives are more influential in pro-environmental intentions than financial motives [78,79]
Summary
The growing global energy consumption has raised serious concerns over resource exhaustion and a series of environmental problems. The residential building sector has been one of the largest energy consumers and accounts for 20–40% energy consumption as well as carbon emission [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Along with energy-efficient construction techniques and building services, occupants’ choices and behaviors are critical factors contributing to residential building energy consumption [9,10]. Household energy-saving behavior is defined as “residents’ behaviors for minimizing energy consumption due to their actions in the built environment.”. Existing studies point out that promoting energy-saving behavior is a promising strategy for enhancing building energy efficiency [11,12,13]. Behavior-driven energy-saving approaches generally require less capital and time investment [14] and work with quick-start energy-saving effects [15]
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