Environmental attitudes and energy consumption among tenants in a high-rise multi-unit residential building in Toronto, Canada

Abstract

The influence that environmental knowledge and belief have on people’s behaviour is one of the important issues in the fields of engineering, environmental study, management and other related areas. However, currently, there is not enough study on household energy use at an occupant level or on evaluation of elements that can affect household's energy use such as environmental knowledge and pro-environmental attitudes in Canadian MURBs. As such, studying household’s energy use and the interrelated effects on their energy consumption is believed to be a crucial step towards reducing energy consumption. Considering the significance of the issues stated above, the present study attempts to evaluate energy consumption and its possible correlation with environmental attitudes among the tenants of a Toronto high-rise multi-unit residential building. The research methodology is based on a quantitative survey method, and the focus of the study is on historical annual energy consumption from April 2011 to June 2013. The main tool for collecting data is a developed questionnaire, and Dunlap’s NEP scale is used for measuring environmental attitudes. With regards to data analysis, the survey data and historical energy consumption data from April 2011 to June 2013 were analysed. The statistical sample size consisted of the 50 tenants who completed the NEP survey from July 29 to August 18, 2014. The detailed statistical results show that there is a negative correlation between environmentally-conscious attitude and energy consumption of the participants which is in agreement with the study’s presented hypothesis. In essence, this means that having high environmentally-conscious attitudes towards the energy consumption has a positive effect on occupant’s energy consumption level.