Sustainable accommodations affording sustainable behaviours: a mixed method investigation

The study develops insight on how architecture materialized in sustainable accommodations may afford environmentally sustainable occupant behaviours which if not supported may significantly contribute to the environmental impact and greenhouse gas emissions of sustainable buildings and potentially hinder the contribution of architecture to climate change mitigation. The goal is to address the knowledge gap and feed information back to architecture on ways to better support sustainable occupant behaviours by sustainable accommodation design. Knowledge is built by adopting the Theory of Affordances as embraced by design through the concept of Perceived Affordances suggesting that sustainable occupant behaviours may be afforded by the sustainable accommodation when occupant-perceived affordances match architect-designed affordances. Perceived affordances are explored qualitatively via 20, face to face, in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and quantitatively via a survey with 222 respondents, performed with occupants of BREEAM certified accommodations across four UK sites. Designed affordances are explored via face to face, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the architects of the same accommodations. The match between the designed and perceived affordances are identified by analytically comparing the results of the occupant studies with the results of the architect studies. The overall results reveal that there are gaps and overlaps in how occupants perceive the sustainable accommodation affords sustainable behaviour and how architects intend to afford those behaviours via their designs. More specifically, occupants report more sustainable behaviours afforded by the sustainable accommodations when their needs are perceived to be supported by the design features. As far as design professionals are concerned, architects reveal considering and intending to support occupant needs and behaviours via their designs. Nevertheless, while certain needs are conceptualized by architects in manners that cover occupant-expressed needs and their integration in design may promote sustainable occupant behaviours, other needs are missing from architects’ agenda potentially obstructing design in affording related sustainable occupant behaviours. The principal contribution of the study to research knowledge is the revelation that behaviourally sustainable design is also need supportive design while highlighting the architectural best practices and pitfalls to promoting sustainable use by design. An additional, methodological contribution is embodied by the newly developed Feature-Need-Behaviour (FNB) table that allows capturing and more importantly comparing occupant perceptions with architect intentions and facilitates the research of sustainable behaviour affordances of sustainable buildings. For architectural practice, the thesis proposes adopting the FNB framework as an informative thinking pattern during design of sustainable accommodations in order to facilitate catering for behavioural sustainability. Future research is proposed to extend the scope of studied occupant behaviours and develop a sample fit for generalizing the findings for the UK. Additionally, it is recommended that testing the results of the present study via quasi-experiments may confirm causality between needs supportive character of design and sustainable occupant behaviour, opening the way for recognizing the sustainability benefits of needs supportive design in policy, regulations, and prevalent sustainable certification systems.