1.1. Green Buildings
The building sector accounts for a large portion of greenhouse gas emissions and therefore represents opportunities for emissions reductions [
1]. In past decades, the building sector has witnessed a green building revolution, driving design and construction toward sustainability [
2]. One of the most significant parts of this movement is the launch of a series of green building rating systems, standards, guidelines, and certifications, such as U.S. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), U.K. BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), and China GBL (Green Building Label) [
3]. The green building concept is based on a life cycle perspective during a building’s design, construction, and operation, so that its negative impact on the natural environment and human health is minimized [
4]. In practice, green buildings require special considerations in terms of site selection, public transit connection, facilities accessibility, urban heat islands, landscape irrigation, indoor air quality, natural ventilation, daylighting, and material selection [
5]. Despite the momentum of the environmental movement, green building is facing significant doubts and challenges which are rooted in non-environmentally friendly habits and require a change in behavior [
6].
Green buildings may actually consume more energy than non-green buildings due to users’ practices. Newsham et al. [
7] conducted an analysis of building energy uses of 100 LEED-certified commercial and institutional buildings, using the dataset provided by the New Buildings Institute and the U.S. Green Buildings Council. On average, LEED buildings used 18–39% less energy per floor area than their conventional counterparts. However, 28–35% of LEED buildings used more energy than their conventional counterparts. The studies pointed out that differing occupancy hours and loads were the main factors that caused LEED buildings to not perform well. Gill et al. [
8] conducted a post-occupancy evaluation of the highest-rated U.K. EcoHomes site. The detailed post-occupancy evaluation investigated the energy performance of the buildings, water consumption, and the comfort and satisfaction of users. Results indicated that energy-efficiency behaviors account for 51%, 37%, and 11% of the variance in heat, electricity, and water consumption, respectively, between dwellings. Scofield [
9] investigated energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and Energy Performance Rating data for 953 office buildings in New York City. Twenty-one of these office buildings were identified as LEED-certified, providing the opportunity for direct comparison of energy performance data for LEED and non-LEED buildings of the same type, time frame, and geographical and climate region. The LEED-certified buildings, collectively, showed no savings compared to non-LEED buildings. LEED Silver and Certified office buildings underperformed other office buildings, suggesting that the LEED building certification is not moving the city toward its goal of climate change mitigation. Increasing concern and controversy surrounding the actual performance of green or sustainable buildings exists [
10]. These studies also suggested that the gap arises not because green building design, tools, techniques or technologies are ‘wrong’, but because of what happens in reality; buildings do not use energy, but people do [
11]. A green building becomes greenwash if it relies on technological solutions, such as solar panels and thermal insulation, while maintaining intensive energy use habits. Good use behaviors can significantly reduce energy consumption [
12].
The green building market share is still small due to the extra cost incurred by building green. Notwithstanding the numerous benefits associated with green buildings, the issue of upfront cost is a frequently cited obstacle which precludes the widespread adoption of green buildings [
13,
14]. In the most widely cited investigation of the costs and benefits of green buildings, Kats et al. [
15] compared the cost of 33 LEED certified green buildings to a conventional design for the same buildings, and found the cost of the green buildings was 1.84% higher, on average. In a later study, Kats [
16] conducted a survey about the green premium on more than 170 green buildings and concluded that the premium on green buildings ranged from 0% to 18%. Langdon [
17] indicated that the cost premium for constructing green office buildings in Australia ranged from 3% to 5% higher for 5-Star certified buildings, and this ratio went beyond 5% for 6-Star buildings. Kim et al. [
18] reported an increase of 10.77% in the construction costs due to incorporating the green building code for residential project development. Steven Winter Associates [
19] investigated the cost implications associated with achieving different levels of LEED certification and found that the green cost premium ranged from 1% to 8.1% depending on the level of certification. Dwaikat and Ali [
20] reviewed 13 green building costs studies and found significant variations. Out of the 13 studies, eight studies recorded a cost premium of greater than 5%, and out of these eight studies, five studies recorded a premium greater than 10%, and out of the five studies, only two recorded a green cost premium greater than 20%. Uğur and Leblebici [
21] categorized two major costs related to a green building project: construction costs and soft costs. The construction costs refer to expenses for construction of the building by the contractor according to the design features. More than half of the construction costs consist of green features, such as alternative systems, applications, and materials, which are converted into credits under the green building rating system. Costs other than the construction costs, referred to as soft costs, include certificate application and approval costs, consultancy and commissioning costs, and additional design costs. The extra cost significantly handicaps the large scale adoption of green buildings [
22].
1.2. Pro-Environment Behavior
Human behaviors are the root, as well as the solution, for today’s environmental challenges [
1,
23]. Pro-environment behaviors have been encouraged in the design of energy and climate policies [
24]. Encouraging pro-environmental behavior has become a research hot spot. Steg and Vlek [
25] defined pro-environmental behaviors as a range of behaviors that benefit the natural environment, enhance environmental quality, or harm the environment as little as possible. Lindenberg and Steg [
26] argued that environmental behaviors often involve a conflict between the different goals a person pursues and suggested a value belief norm model to help understand a person’s environmental behaviors. Stern et al. [
27] suggested that individuals who accept a movement’s basic values believe that valued objects are threatened, and believe that their actions can help restore those values, experience an obligation for pro-movement action that predisposes them to provide support. A number of studies have applied the theory to predict various types of pro-environment behaviors, such as acceptability of household energy conservation behaviors [
28], travel mode choices [
29], and workplace energy use behaviors [
30].
Studies of pro-environmental behaviors are going beyond the singular linear process of behavioral activation and looking at the complexity between two or more pro-environmental behaviors. Larson [
31] argued that understanding the multi-dimensional structure of pro-environmental behaviors would be of great importance and that pro-environmental behaviors contain multiple domains that cannot and should not be measured using an aggregated scale. Kaiser and Kibbe [
32] suggested that pro-environmental behaviors could be approached from either an observer’s outside or an actor’s inside viewpoint: when behavior is defined from the outside by its ecological consequences, even seemingly similar behaviors, such as recycling paper and plastics, would fall into distinct categories; while, when behavior is defined from the inside by the actor’s environmentally protective intentions, even diverse acts such as recycling and willingness to pay for solar panels would appear to belong to one class of actions. Another complexity between pro-environmental behaviors is behavioral spillover: when performing one pro-environmental behavior increases the likelihood of performing another [
33,
34]. For example, people are more likely to recycle plastics when they already practice recycling paper. On the other side, when people perform one pro-environmental behavior, the successful performance of that behavior might be perceived as having achieved the goal or having done enough to move toward the goal. The person may then see no need to perform any additional pro-environmental task [
34]. For example, people may buy organic foods and perceive that action as satisfying the goal of being a green consumer, and therefore may not subsequently consider buying local products because buying organic foods is seen as a substitute for buying locally produced foods [
35]. A number of studies pointed out that resources and cost of behaviors could play a significant role in the link between two pro-environmental behaviors [
36] and the consistency of two pro-environmental behaviors [
37].
1.3. Objective
The next stage of the green building movement needs to address pro-environmental behaviors to overcome the abovementioned habitual barriers. The movement should especially encourage energy and resource saving to reduce the energy consumption of the green buildings in use and should also cultivate the consumers’ willingness to buy green buildings to increase the market share [
38]. Although a number of environmental studies have investigated different pro-environmental behaviors, and their complexity and intricacy [
39,
40], few have focused on green building-associated pro-environment behaviors to provide information for the development of green buildings. This research aims to link the two types of pro-environment behaviors in relation to green buildings. Specifically, the research has two research questions to answer.
The first question is, “Are green building users also green building consumers?” In other words, would people who behave in an environmentally friendly manner in using green buildings be likely to pay for the extra cost of green buildings? The literature about pro-environment behaviors discloses the complexity and intricacy of different behaviors and the spill-over effect. One element that is not often discussed in the pro-environment literature is the role that resources play in the performance of behavior, the extent to which its performance requires tangible and intangible resources [
41]. This research aimed to investigate the spillover effects related to green building pro-environment behaviors that require dissimilar resources: energy and resource saving behaviors in using green buildings that do not require money in order to be more environmental friendly and willingness to pay for the extra cost of green building that involves financial resources, meaning spending money in order to be more environmentally friendly.
The second question is, “What environmental belief can predict the two pro-environment behaviors?” Environmental belief refers to a person’s worldviews about the relationship between humans and their natural surroundings, which underlies a system of attitudes and beliefs that determine behavior toward the environment [
42]. Environmental beliefs have been mentioned as a potential predictor of energy and resource conservation behaviors, such as water conservation [
43], organic food production [
44], and other pro-environmental behaviors [
29,
45]. For the first time, this research correlated environmental beliefs with two key green building pro-environment behaviors, aiming to provide evidence and guidelines to push the green building movement toward the next stage. This next step is how the green building movement can promote building users’ pro-environmental behaviors and encourage them to pay the extra cost of green building by using different kinds of green technologies.