Green Building Occupant Satisfaction: Evidence from the Australian Higher Education Sector

Abstract

Universities spend billions of dollars on green buildings as a sustainability commitment. This research investigates occupant satisfaction with indoor environmental quality (IEQ), building design (BD), and facilities management (FM) in five highly ranked green higher educational buildings in the subtropical climate of Australia, in comparison to nine non-green counterparts. The results disclose that the green building users were more consistently satisfied than the non-green building users with BD&FM elements, such as design, needs from facilities, building image, cleaning, the availability of meeting rooms, and storage. On the other hand, the study revealed weaknesses of green buildings in IEQ, such as noise, ventilation, and artificial lighting. The individual environmental control positively correlated with satisfaction in non-green buildings, but did not significantly affect satisfaction in green buildings. This study also identified the influences of non-environmental factors on occupant satisfaction, such as gender, age, sitting close to a window, hours spent in the building and in the workstation, and the number of people sharing office space. The research provides evidence and guidance for investing in, designing, and managing green educational facilities.

Occupants’ Awareness of and Satisfaction with Green Building Technologies in a Certified Office Building

“…In addition, a t-test and ANOVA were conducted to determine whether there is a significant difference in satisfaction with these green building technologies according to the demographic hypotheses. The gender and age breakdown is often used in the data analysis of POE studies [10,15,18]. In this study, we attempted to investigate the occupants' physiology and physical perception [10,21] of environmental comfort and convenience from the green building technologies, based on their experiences.…”

“…An analysis of a more extensive subset of the CBE database was also presented in a study by Altomonte and Shiavon [5], which concluded that there was no significant influence of LEED certification on occupant satisfaction with IEQ. Khoshbakht et al [18] disclosed that the occupants of green buildings were more consistently satisfied with building design and facility management compared to those of non-green buildings, but also detected weakness in regard to indoor environmental quality parameters. However, the POE study by Agha-Hossein et al [11] showed that employees expressed higher satisfaction with their work environment at their recently refurbished office building that had received a BREEAM "Very Good" rating, compared with their previous office.…”

“…Some studies [13,14,19,20] focused on the association of occupants' satisfaction, attitude, behavior, expectation, and perception. Bordass and Leaman [18] suggested that occupants of green buildings tend to forgive and are satisfied with green buildings, despite experiencing discomfort in certain environmental aspects. In the U.K., Monfared and Sharples [13] conducted a longitudinal study in two government office buildings that had received BREEAM "Excellent" ratings.…”

“…The majority of these previous POE studies of green buildings focused on the satisfaction of the indoor thermal, visual, and acoustic environment and indoor air quality. They have investigated specific aspects of the thermal, visual, and acoustic environment and indoor air quality, such as temperature, thermal comfort, amount of light, glare, stuffiness, noise, and sound privacy [5,8,10,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]22]. However, because building technologies have a complex impact on the environment, it is difficult to directly determine what the factors of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with individual technologies are.…”

Human Factors in Green Building: Building Types and Users’ Needs

“…The research challenge is how we understand and measure human factors. In recent years, numerous human factors related studies have been found on the subject of indoor environment quality (IEQ) which includes aspects such as thermal comfort, air quality, noise and visual aspects of a building [2][3][4]. These studies aimed to define optimal settings for satisfying building occupants.…”