A review and comparison of studies on office window behaviour using engineering and social science methods

Abstract

With the urgent need of reducing building carbon emissions to ease climate change, it is necessary to have energy efficient buildings. An effective way of achieving this mission is adopting natural ventilation, which is commonly achieved by openable windows controlled by building occupants in most cases. In this kind of buildings, therefore, occupant window behaviour becomes significantly important on the building performance. To better understand this behaviour, researchers from both engineering domain and social science domain have contributed, but it seems like that they have different research aims, methods and findings. To promote transdisciplinary collaboration in this area, this study has carried out a thorough review of studies on window behaviour in office buildings. The review work collected 66 relevant studies, and analysed their aims, methods and main findings to figure out the differences between engineering studies and social science studies. The existing studies were mainly coming from renowned academic journals (91%) and academic conferences (9%). The comparison revealed significant differences between the two scientific domains, with some overlapping between them. To obtain deeper understanding on occupant window behaviour, critical discussions on how to better collaborate between these two domains in the future have been provided as well.