Positive Sustainable Built Environments: Do Green Buildings Support Green Behavior?

Erin Miller Hamilton (Texas Tech University)

Increasingly, scholars and practitioners recognize the need to approach environmental problems from multiple perspectives. This presentation argues that sustainability within the urban context should be defined in (at least) two domains: the built environment and the behavioral environment. Sustainable built environments minimize the environmental impacts of the construction process, ongoing building maintenance, and resource consumption. But one might also consider sustainable buildings as those in which the occupants are supported in their environmentally responsible behaviors (ERBs).In a longitudinal study of the environmentally-responsible behaviors of occupants in six green and non-green residence halls, the author applies a theoretical model to the analysis of building features to understand how the built environment may support or undermine occupant ERBs. The Positive Sustainable Built Environments (PSBE) model is composed of three principle domains: Prime, Permit, and Invite. Collectively, the three components of the PSBE model suggest that a building 1) may prepare occupants to participate in ERBs through the restoration of their mental resources and/or by communicating a sustainable ethos, 2) may allow building occupants to control aspects of their interior environments related to their own energy and resource consumption, and 3) will encourage occupants to engage in ERBs through building features that implement a variety of behavioral intervention strategies.

A visual content analysis of the six residence halls was conducted in order to score several interior spaces within the buildings according to the PSBE model. Linear mixed-effects regression analyses revealed strong support for two of the three domains of the model. The Prime and Invite domains were found to positively support occupant ERBs, regardless of the greenness of the residence hall. Results will be discussed in light of implications for designers seeking to adapt the physical and informational environments of green buildings to better support environmentally responsible behavior.