The "Situational Context" for Changing Environmental Knowledge and Behaviors: A Pre and Post Occupancy Evaluation of a Green School Building

Laura Cole (University of Missouri)

While green buildings have long been examined for technical performance, scholars are increasingly interested in social metrics. Issues of absenteeism and productivity have been fairly well covered in the literature, but less in known about how green buildings can foster sustainability education and pro-environmental behaviors. This is likely due to the complexity of studying the impact of the environment on outcomes like knowledge and behavior together with the lack of unifying theory from environment-behavior perspectives. Behavior change models rarely include the built environment as a variable, and, when included, it is positioned vaguely as a “situational factor” affecting behavior change (e.g., Hines, 1987). At the same time, the capacity of both buildings and human behavior to address global sustainability challenges is considerable. A recent review of the literature revealed that human behavior across residential and commercial building sectors can result in a 10% to 86% variation in the amount of energy used (Paone & Bacher, 2018). The cultivation of environmental knowledge and behaviors in green buildings is a research area well worth advancing. This work focuses on “Teaching Green Buildings” (TGBs), or buildings intentionally designed to enhance sustainability education. This longitudinal study examined one school building at three points in time before and after the move into a new construction TGB. Middle school students at the TGB and a comparison non-green school (n = 264) took a survey measuring green building knowledge (GBK) and environmentally responsible behaviors (ERBs). Regression results showed that GBK is significantly higher for students in the green school compared to the non-green school, but not increasing over time for green school students. No differences in ERBs were detected across schools or time. Implications for the design of green buildings to support environmental education and environmentally responsible behaviors will be discussed.