Social acceptability of using low carbon building: a survey exploration

Abstract

Enhancement of buildings energy efficiency has typically been approached by viewing the buildings from a social acceptance perspective focusing on multi-level stakeholders. In order to examine social acceptance in terms of public’s opinion and knowledge about using low carbon buildings, a multiple-choice questionnaire was designed with four groups of questions: background information, community perspective, social perspective, and market perspective. The study showed that 59.72% of the seventy respondents’ opinion were using low carbon building (LCB) can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In general, more than 53% of the respondents were willing to upgrade their accommodation to LCB. However, 70% respondents were not ready to hire any consultant because majority of have the problem in paying the upfront cost for LCB.

Keywords

• low carbon buildings
• net zero energy buildings
• economic feasibility
• energy efficiency
• social acceptability