Home Occupant Archetypes

• Published in: A+BE (Delft.) 2019-11, Vol.9 (5)
• Main Author: Marco Antonio ORTIZ SANCHEZ
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2212-3202; 2214-7233
• DOI: 10.7480/abe.2019.13.4152

This research is aimed at better understanding how occupants use energy in their homes from a comfort-driven perspective, in order to propose customized environmental characteristics that could improve the occupants’ comfort while reducing energy consumption. To propose such bespoke environmental features and feedback, occupant archetypes were produced based on the intentions and motivations behind comfort behaviours. Building upon the aim of this thesis, the following main research question was proposed: How can energy behaviours be studied from a comfort-driven perspective in order to facilitate the development of environmental features that support more efficient occupant behaviours and that provide the comfort needs of the person? A mixed-methods human-centered design approach was developed for which four steps were required to answer the main research question, reflecting also the four parts of this dissertation. 1. An extensive and multidisciplinary literature review investigated behavioural theories and comfort theories to find out what the drivers behind behaviours are and to understand comfort from a holistic and integrative lens, including social and psychological comfort. Additionally, an overview of energy use in residential buildings was presented, along with the links between energy consumption and occupant behaviours, thus explaining the problems of performance gaps and the rebound effect. The review eventually proposes that energy consumption, behaviours, and comfort are elements of an interacting system, as many behavioural expressions exercised at home are comfort-driven and several of these comfortdriven behaviours result in energy use. This part was the platform on which a questionnaire was developed based on constructs that motivate behaviour: locus of control, attitudes towards energy, environmental needs, and emotions towards home, in addition to other variables such as health status, demographics, and energy consuming habitual actions. Thus, the questionnaire is a tool that consolidates in a single instrument a self-reported assessment of energy consumption patterns and comfort behaviours. The resulting questionnaire was composed of previously validated instruments that were adapted to the context to assess the corresponding constructs and was composed of 65 variables. 2. The newly developed questionnaire was pilot tested with a population consisting of master students of the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the