The Use of Survey Questionnaires to Measure Attitudes and Behaviours Related to Sustainable Building Issues

The building sector accounts for almost a third of the global final energy consumption and attempts to lower it can have a big impact on the environment. Social sciences have an important role to play in shaping the built environment by conducting research on the predesign and design process and post-occupancy evaluation. In this context, measuring attitudes and behaviours of building users with surveys can play an important role in achieving sustainability goals.

This contribution is based on a systematic literature review that focuses on published research studies that use surveys to examine environmental comfort, energy consumption and other sustainability issues related to building construction and use. The review assesses the quality of contributions and identifies knowledge gaps. Moreover, works that involve specific demographics groups and deal with inequalities are identified. In parallel, an inventory of survey questionnaires and items is generated and a selection of them is assessed with available survey questionnaire evaluation methods. Based on the results improvements of survey research practices to study sustainable building issues are proposed and further research needs are identified.