Scientometric analysis of post-occupancy evaluation research: Development, frontiers and main themes

Abstract

Post-occupancy evaluation (POE), a comprehensive evaluating approach for building operational performance, has attracted considerable research attention worldwide. This research is the first inclusive scientometric review of POE research, aiming to systematically analyse and visualise the existing POE literature. Through four steps of data collection, 1,351 POE articles over past two decades from Web of Science have been gathered and analysed by using CiteSpace. This research retrospectively traces the development of POE research from 2002 to 2021 The review identifies that the main focuses of POE research have dynamically formed with the interdisciplinary characteristic. By generating scientific knowledge maps of the co-occurrence, emergence and clusters of keywords, it intuitively shows that some particular keywords, such as ‘performance’, ‘thermal comfort’ and ‘IEQ’, are much more obvious than others; a series of hotspots have emerged in different times; and three main themes are outlined and critical reviewed based on scientometric findings, i.e., energy consumption monitoring of building operations, indoor environmental quality and the evaluation of occupants’ perceptions. This research has implications for policy makers, developers and researchers in the building sector by providing them with a detailed account of status quo and the trend of POE.