Psychological determinants of energy conservation behaviour among office building users

Abstract

In this age of growing world, climate change is considered as one of the major threats to our Mother Earth. Energy sector represents the largest sources of emissions by far, which is accounted for almost 68% of greenhouse gases emission in the world. Buildings contribute to 32% of overall global final energy use. Energy conservation is one of the vital components to address in term of psychological behavior among building users towards energy saving action. However, energy conservation behavior among household often influenced by monetary incentive shall not be generalized into office building context whereby the users have no financial responsibility on its utilities expenses. At present, the challenge of how to encourage office building users towards energy conservation behaviour is one of an emerging topic that drawing the attention of researchers. A specific desired behavior such as energy conservation behavior is influencing by set of psychological determinants, hence a specific set of psychological determinants in local context should be identified in targeting effective behavior change. Thus, this study focuses to identify the psychological determinants of energy conservation behaviour among office building users and to determine the causal relationship of the psychological determinants of energy conservation behaviour. Using behavioural changes as an adaptation approaches, an extensive literature search has been carried out on 70 published literatures to explore the existing energy conservation model to specify the psychological determinants of energy conservation behaviour within office building context. The result of the content analysis indicated that the energy conservation behaviour among office building users attributed by few psychological determinants: Attitude, Subjective Norm, Perceived Behavior Control, Habits, Motivation and Energy Knowledge. In this context of study, an elicitation study was conducted among office building user in Kota Iskandar to gather input regarding the belief and thoughts on energy conservation behaviour. Then, a set of questionnaire survey was design based on the result of an elicitation study and distributed to the office building users in Kota Iskandar. A total of 126 convenience sample were gathered and submitted for SEM analysis. The causal relationship of the identified psychological determinants was tested by using smartPLS-SEM software version 3.0. In detailed, the results show that the psychological determinants that are significant towards energy conservation behaviour among office building users are the Subjective Norm, PBC and Past Experiences. The findings may serve as an initial reference to the management progress in fostering ESB among users in building context.