Development of a quantitative model for performance assessment of urban green buildings: exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis

Abstract

Background and Objective: This study aims to develop a quantitative model for the performance evaluation of urban green buildings using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Materials and Methods: Criteria and sub-criteria related to green building were collected, then to content validity and reliability of the primary questionnaire were confirmed by a panel of 11 experts. The final questionnaire with 8 main criteria and 26 sub-criteria was provided to 295 green building users to model the performance of the green buildings. Content validity and Cronbach's alpha were used for validity and reliability of the initial questionnaire, Expletory Factor Analysis was employed to identify factor structure and Confirmatory Factor Analysis was utilized to examine factor loadings and goodness of fit. Results: The final questionnaire included 8 main criteria and 26 secondary criteria. The internal consistency of the test was adequate (alpha>0.6); the chi-square test for EFI analysis was equal to 0.09 and RMSEA<0.05 and the CFI index was equal to =0.98. Conclusion: The results showed the designed 8-factor model could predict the impact of green building performance by 81.64%. EFI and CFI analysis confirmed the fitting of the model too.

Keywords

• green building
• modeling
• assessment
• exploratory factor analysis
• confirmatory factor analysis