Yang, Guanyu;
(2024)
The influence of social norms on personal cooling behaviors among financial office workers in Southern China.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Increasing cooling demand poses immense challenges to electricity supply and the environment, particularly in developing countries. Meanwhile, occupant behaviors are crucial in determining thermal comfort and energy consumption in buildings. Therefore, targeting occupants’ behaviors regarding different cooling options can be a viable and complementary solution to the cooling dilemma. Two sustainable cooling alternatives are selected to replace the elements of the current cooling practice featuring excessive air conditioning: lighter clothing and personal cooling devices. As behavioral economics nudges have proven cost-effective in influencing energy-related behaviors, this thesis aims to design and test interventions leveraging social norms nudges for more sustainable cooling choices in offices in China. Informed by a systematized review, the gaps in the literature lie in the scant evidence of the application of social norm nudges in China and the insufficient input from social sciences regarding the context of office cooling in the region. Therefore, as the first attempt to devise green nudges for cooling in China, this thesis adopts a mixed-method design by zooming in on the case of financial workers in Guangdong Province. This thesis contains three steps: 1) a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews to pinpoint the critical norms in air conditioning use and personal cooling; 2) an exploratory survey to further understand the social norms of cooling and inform the design of behavioral experiments; and 3) an online survey experiment to test whether social norm messages are effective in nudging office workers towards choosing greener cooling alternatives. Overall, the empirical evidence highlights the indispensable role of cooling-related social norms and reveals the limitations of social norm nudges in inducing behavior change.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The influence of social norms on personal cooling behaviors among financial office workers in Southern China |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Bartlett School Env, Energy and Resources |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10189924 |
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