Behaviour change in home ventilation: learnings from Dutch refurbishment projects on residents’ actions and motivations

Abstract

In this article, we highlight some of our learnings from realised refurbishment projects on residents’ actions and motivations in the various ways they aerate their home. The aim of the projects is to contribute to global climate change mitigation goals by developing residential energy-reducing refurbishments that can be upscaled (Silvester et al., 2017). Our research has a design research perspective, which means that we enquire into the relationship between the residents and the user interfaces and building elements in their refurbished home. We draw these learnings from our involvement as observers and advisers in several recent zeroenergy refurbishment projects in social housing in the Netherlands. We will show that the residents’ actions are related to their trust in the user interfaces. Thistrust is in turn related to some of the values that the residents expect their home to address: support keeping healthy, facilitating their activities and lifestyle, andhaving systems that are easy to use and control (Guerra-Santin et al., 2017).