A dilemma between building indoor environment preferences and occupant energy behaviours

Often, building occupants compromise the energy savings of the building when they modulate their comfort through occupant behaviours. Therefore, this study identifies the relationships among indoor environmental conditions, comfort preferences, and occupant behaviours to improve future energy modelling works on occupant behaviour in buildings. A self-administered online questionnaire survey was conducted using a purposive sample of 46 occupants selected from five educational office buildings. Results show that the occupants' satisfaction with indoor environmental quality (IEQ), user-centred building controls, and furniture arrangements across the three office types: private, shared, and open-plan office has a similar value except for thermal comfort in winter and/or summer, ventilation in winter, acoustic comfort, and access to lighting control. The results also show the relationships of 17 occupant behaviours with 15 comfort preferences, where that highlights that the occupants were highly concerned about satisfying individual indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal comforts through their behaviours rather than to save energy and follow management guidelines. Furthermore, IAQ and control over thermal and IAQ related parameters such as heating, cooling, and ventilation are highly correlated with the occupant behaviours, and these could be considered as primary predictors of occupant energy behaviours. These relationships of IEQ and user-centred building controls with occupant behaviours could be utilized to enhance future occupant energy behaviour modelling approaches and pinpoint the energy wasteful behaviours.