Rethinking the environmental and experiential categories of sustainable building design: a conjoint analysis

Abstract

Although extensive research has investigated the benefits of green buildings very little is known about user perception and satisfaction. Most of the studies involving users in green buildings are in the form of post-occupancy evaluations that gather satisfaction scores and qualitative feedback from building occupants. However it is difficult to generalize these individual case studies to a wider discussion of preferences for green building attributes. The current research uses a more generalizable technique to examine occupants' experiences in green buildings. This study identifies the relative importance of environmental and experiential design categories by occupants based on lived experiences in the space. The article provides the results of a Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) study that compares responses from green and non-green building occupants. The results provide novel insights into the degree of importance of experiential categories of design, such as social territories, visual, and non-visual aesthetics, compared with environmental categories of design, such as energy efficiency, water savings, and indoor environmental quality. The article contributes to the green building design literature by evaluating green buildings from a new perspective that is based on users' preferences. This perspective can be influential in developing green building rating systems for enhancing green building performance.