Search Results (36)

This study contributes to the broader sustainability discourse by evaluating public knowledge, awareness, and practices regarding air pollution among residents of Hanoi, Vietnam, focusing on its causes, health impacts, and mitigation strategies. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 521 individuals in suburbs around Hanoi. A multistage sampling technique, combining cluster and simple random sampling, was used for participant recruitment. Three central and three suburban districts of Hanoi were randomly selected as clusters. One individual from each household was invited to participate and answer a structured survey, which assessed perceptions of air pollution, its human-induced causes, recognised health impacts, and individual and community-level mitigation behaviours. Nearly all participants (98.3%) were aware of air pollution, with 65.3% attributing it to human activities and 61.2% recognising specific air pollutants as primary contributors. The majority (93.9%) acknowledged health impacts, citing respiratory infections (55.1%) and sinus issues (51.2%) as prevalent concerns. Vulnerable groups, such as children under 5 (82.3%) and adults over 65 years old (77.4%), were identified as disproportionately affected. Social media (68.9%) and television (58.3%) were the dominant sources of information. Despite a recognition of air pollution’s importance (98.5%), there was limited engagement in systemic sustainability actions, such as supporting renewable energy initiatives. Most participants (84.3%) reported personal mitigation efforts, including energy-saving practices (35.5%) and walking instead of driving a car or bike (35.3%). While awareness of air pollution and its health impacts is high among Hanoi residents, proactive engagement in systemic solutions remains limited. Policymakers should prioritise community-based programs, public–private partnerships, sustainability education, and culturally tailored policy interventions to bridge gaps between awareness and action. Tailored interventions addressing demographic and cultural factors are essential to fostering socio-environmental sustainability in rapidly urbanising contexts. Full article

In the housing sector emission reduction builds on a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and increasing the efficiency of energy usage, with heating playing a dominant role in comparison to that of electricity. For electricity production in the residential sector, research shows that different settings of (co-)ownership in renewables are linked to a greater tendency to invest in energy-efficient devices or to adopt more energy-conscious behaviours. The empirical analysis demonstrates that fully-fledged prosumers, i.e., consumers who have the option to choose between self-consumption and selling to third parties or the grid, exhibit a higher tendency to invest in energy efficiency and that only this group manifests a greater likelihood of engaging in conscious-energy consumption behaviour. This paper extends the analysis to include heating in the residential sector. The study conducted an ANCOVA based on a sample of 2585 German households. The findings show that, depending on the (co-)ownership setting, the willingness to invest and to adopt energy-efficient practices grows considerably. Consumer-sellers demonstrate the highest willingness to invest and adapt energy conscious behaviour. Furthermore, regarding heating in particular, self-consumers are also inclined to invest and engage in energy-savings behaviour. Full article

Women’s reproductive decisions and life trajectories are shaped by an interplay of biological, social, and ecological factors. While Life History Theory (LHT) has traditionally been applied in biological sciences to examine reproductive trade-offs, its integration with Life Course Theory (LCT) and empowerment frameworks offers a novel approach to understanding how structural and environmental conditions shape women’s reproductive behaviours and household roles. This study applies Categorical Principal Component Analysis (CATPCA) to identify key profiles of women’s lives in two ecologically distinct rural communities in Timor-Leste—Ossu and Natarbora—and examines how these patterns relate to early life conditions. Building on a longitudinal study conducted in these communities, our findings reveal four distinct profiles: (1) Tech and Sanitation, linked to household labour-saving technology and higher education; (2) Traditional, reflecting large household size and livestock ownership; (3) Contraception, associated with fertility control, particularly among younger cohorts; and (4) High Fertility, characterised by more births, greater child mortality, and being born in high-altitude regions. By combining LHT, LCT, and the empowerment framework, this study analyses how reproductive strategies and household ecology intersect with structural inequalities. These findings offer key insights for policies aimed at improving women’s autonomy, access to resources, and reproductive health in rural Timor-Leste. Full article

This study aims to quantify the extent to which poor households receiving cash support from the Vision Umurenge Programme (VUP) allocate their income across major spending categories, mainly consumption, savings, household-level investment, and cash transfers for community participation. The analysis utilises a nationally representative panel dataset of 1642 respondents, collected between 2013 and 2017. A Maximum Likelihood Method (MLM) approach was employed to model four financial behaviours: (i) saving, (ii) consumption, (iii) investment, and (iv) social transfers as a proxy for community participation. The independent variables include the monetary benefits received by individuals over different periods, alongside demographic characteristics such as gender, age, education level, and area of residence (rural–urban), which were controlled in the analysis. The findings reveal a positive and statistically significant effect of the direct cash support provided by the VUP on increased consumption, and marginal effects on individual savings and investment behaviours. However, the data do not provide sufficient evidence to conclusively establish a relationship between participation in the VUP and cash transfers for community participation. The study recommends the intensification of efforts to engage in saving as way to build resilience, and further suggest a periodic increase in the VUP benefits’ size to cushion inflation effects. Full article

The global energy crisis has spurred increased investments in energy efficiency and clean energy initiatives; however, the results have fallen short of expected effectiveness. Concurrently, population growth and urbanisation drive a persistent surge in energy demands, especially within the residential sector, significant to overall building energy consumption. Current research focuses on residents’ responses to one-shot investments for energy efficiency or clean sources. The renovation wave, involving a massive number of existing buildings, calls for the mobilisation of huge investments that can be hard to afford in the short run. Sustainable behavioural change is complementarily rising as a key asset for maximising the overall estimated energy saving potential. Despite significant efforts to analyse household energy use and promote behavioural transformations, the literature remains gaping about future users, particularly the younger generation, as future leaders of sustainable development who exhibit a more responsible approach towards climate-related issues but also a strong dependency on digital-based solutions, which may influence energy use patterns and living habits, also impacting relations among peers and overall societal sustainability and energy efficiency. This article proposes a systematic literature review to analyse the variables affecting young people’s energy behaviour at home. The aim is to investigate the engines and gaps between strategies or tools for behaviour change and the expected effects, then find potential methods to address that barrier to identify a more promising approach, encouraging the younger generation to translate towards more sustainable energy behaviours. Full article

This paper assesses the energy efficiency of two buildings constructed in the 1960s in Madrid. One of the buildings is refurbished including passive energy efficiency improvements, while the other remains in its original state. The area is one of a series of low-income residential inefficient developments built by the state on the capital’s outskirts in the 1950s. Their buildings require huge amounts of energy to meet occupants’ basic energy needs. This paper quantifies the energy savings and improved comfort achieved by building envelope energy retrofitting. For this purpose, it proposes a comprehensive methodology spanning data monitoring in homes in buildings, occupant surveys and energy simulation models—a standard approach to estimating improvement potential. Our aim is to compare the expected energy savings predicted by energy certificates with monitored data. The paper concludes that the comfort level in the retrofitted building improved tangibly but that the differing behaviours of the building’s occupants make the energy saving difficult to quantify with any precision. The calibrated model targets energy consumption savings after renovation of approximately 25% in heating and 50% in cooling for a typical household of four people with basic comfort needs reasonably met. Regarding heating consumption, the results of the calibrated model are lower than expected savings using the official certificate input data. However, cooling consumption savings were found to be greater than expected. Full article

The main objective is to propose a calculation method for assessing the benefits of individual domestic prosumers in self-consumption and economic savings when managing their own energy resources. The paper applies the demand-side management concept in the residential sector from the individual domestic perspective so that customers can understand the value of their own sustainable energy resources, conducting self-generation and demand management. The novelty lies in allowing the prosumer to manage their own energy resources to their benefit at a reasonable cost, instead of participating in automated large residential demand-side-management programmes that respond to the means of the grid system operator or other energy service companies, such as aggregators. A methodology for calculating the self-consumption rate and the economic benefit for the consumer is proposed, including three different cases: consumer demand is higher than self-generation, and consumer demand is equal to self-generation, and consumer demand is lower than self-generation. The methodology is validated with actual data from a household in Valencia (Spain) during a complete year, obtaining an average reduction in the annual electricity bill of 70% and a demand coverage with the self-renewable system reaching values of 80% throughout the year. The significance of this methodology goes beyond the economic revenue of the individual consumer; it also aims to guide consumers towards efficient practices in the use of their available energy resources and raise awareness on their energy behaviour. Full article

The respect of human beings for the planet’s boundaries is an obligation of humanity for the sake of our own and future generations. Achieving this planetary sustainability requires a radical change in the way humanity develops. This study aims to explore whether a sample of Portuguese civil society is committed to achieving this purpose. We explored: (i) citizens’ adherence to sustainable behaviour in terms of purchases and household practices; (ii) if environmental concerns and activism are predictors of these sustainable behaviours; and (iii) if environmental concerns influence environmental activism. A quantitative approach was used based on partial least squares. The results revealed that respondents demonstrate sustainable behaviour in consumption by avoiding plastic and looking for recyclable packaging and in housework by saving energy; environmental activism proved to be the most significant predictor of these behaviours, followed by environmental concerns. This article constitutes an opportunity to take (suggested) measures that encourage a change in the behavioural patterns of societies. Full article

Understanding occupants’ behaviours (OBs) of heating and cooling use in dwellings is essential for effectively promoting occupants’ behavioural change for energy saving and achieving efficient demand response operation. Thus, intensive research has been conducted on data collection, statistical analysis, and modelling of OBs. However, the majority of smart metres currently deployed worldwide monitor only the total household consumption rather than appliance-level load. Therefore, estimating the turn-on/off state of specific home appliances from the measured household total electricity referred to as non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM), has gained research attention. However, the current NILM methods overlook the specific features of inverter-controlled heat pumps (IHPs) used for space heating/cooling; thus, they are unsuitable for detecting OBs. This study presents a rule-based method for identifying the occupants’ intended operation states of IHPs based on a statistical analysis of load data monitored at 423 dwellings. This method detects the state of IHPs by subtracting the power of sequential-operation appliances other than IHPs from the total household power. Three time-series characteristics, including the durations of power-on/off states and power differences between power-off/on states, were used for this purpose. The performance of the proposed method was validated, indicating an F-score of 0.834. Full article

We examine the effects of receiving remittances on household saving behaviour and expenditure patterns in Vietnam. We consider the amount of saving, the saving rate, and the share of expenditure, as well as per capita expenditure on education, health, assets, house repairs, food, non-food, and utilities. We apply propensity score matching to data from the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) of 2012. We find that remittances have a positive impact on household savings and increase both the amount of saving and the saving rate. As far as expenditure patterns are concerned, our results indicate that receiving households spend more on health, assets, and house repairs, and less on food. This finding suggests that households tend to use remittances productively, with receiving households increasing their investments in human and physical capital. For the economy as a whole, remittances can create more opportunities for the development of services provided by banks, financial institutions, hospitals and healthcare centres, and give incentives to the production of building materials and tangible assets. Full article

An automatic dishwasher is a water-using, energy-demanding contraption with 40–50 different component parts fashioned out of different materials—metals and non-metals—which over the last 70 years has evolved in its role as a comfort-enhancing, convenience-providing, time-saving white good in the kitchen of the modern urban household, especially in the countries of the developed world. Its lifecycle, which spans about 12–13 years on average, lends itself to research in a variety of sustainability aspects—politico-legal/regulatory, economic, environmental, social and techno-functional—and fields—thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, acoustics, economics, chemistry, microbiology, materials science, design engineering, wastewater treatment, energy engineering, consumer behaviour, and, of late, sustainable consumption and production. The end goal of this review is to present the automatic dishwasher—almost ubiquitous and taken-for-granted in the western world these days—as a candidate for progressive research and development, resulting in its continued evolution. The author facilitates this by providing an overview of the different aspects of sustainability addressed by researchers thus far. It at once reinforces the importance of transdisciplinary research, finds answers to a clutch of ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘where’, ‘how’, ‘who’, and ‘when’ questions, and reminds us that improvement/s in one aspect must not undermine or thwart those in any of the others. It is the first of its kind, as far as the automatic dishwasher is concerned; it is a well-structured review of 84 peer-reviewed journal publications focusing on the dishwasher, accessed through Scopus and contacting researchers through ResearchGate, spanning the time period 1980–2021, originating in 21 countries (with Germany leading the pack, with 22% of the publications), and sourced from 63 different journals. Over a 16-year period between 1998 and 2014, both the energy use and water consumption of dishwashers decreased by well over 40%. Consumers in the USA, reportedly, are willing to pay up to 90% more for a higher-rated dishwasher. Interestingly, a publication from Germany states that manual dishwashing, if done in accordance with the Best Practice Tips (recommended by another German study), can have a 20% lower environmental footprint than automatic dishwashers. Full article

Pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) helps individuals to minimize the negative effects of their actions on the environment; for example, by recycling and reducing energy consumption. This study aimed to explore consumers’ attitudes and trust in energy-efficient household appliances and their environmental and eco-label knowledge to determine how these may affect pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). In addition, the study examined the mediating effects of attitude and green trust on the proposed frameworks of environmental and eco-label knowledge in relation to consumer pro-environmental behaviour. PLS-SEM (Partial Least Squares–Structural Equation Modelling) was applied to a study from Bangladesh to examine hypotheses proposed from the data generated by 1510 valid respondents relating to their experiences of using household energy-efficient products. The results showed that environmental knowledge, eco-label knowledge, attitude, and green trust all significantly correlated with consumer pro-environmental behaviour. In addition, attitude and green trust significantly mediated the relationship between environmental knowledge, eco-label knowledge, and pro-environmental behaviour. This study also found that green trust positively affects consumer attitudes, and that those attitudes serve as a significant mediator between green trust and pro-environmental behaviour. An IPMA (importance-performance matrix analysis) map indicated that the total effects of environmental attitude and eco-label knowledge were more important to defining the pro-environmental behaviour of consumers than those of environmental knowledge and green trust. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research introduces for the first time an empirical survey that provides a new theoretical framework for consumer pro-environmental behaviour in regard to energy-efficient household appliances in the context of a developing country. Suggestions are provided on ways to promote energy-saving appliances from theoretical and practical perspectives. Full article

Oversimplifying occupant behaviour using static and standard schedules has been identified as a limitation of building energy simulation tools. This paper describes the use of hierarchical cluster analysis to establish the most typical indoor temperature profiles of Albanian dwellings based on monitored indoor temperatures in winter and summer, along with building and occupant surveys undertaken in 49 randomly selected dwellings in Tirana. Three statistically different profiles were developed for each summer and winter, indicating that homes are used in different ways, as well as revealing possible comfort requirements. Furthermore, statistical analysis was undertaken to determine the strength of the association between the clusters and contextual factors related to the building, household, and occupancy. A statistically significant association was found between the presence of children and the clusters in winter, suggesting that families with dependents use more energy. Building-related factors including building type, building age, and wall insulation were found to be statistically significantly associated with clusters in summer. These profiles could provide more accurate outcomes of energy consumption of Albanian homes and energy savings from retrofits. They could also facilitate the development of low-energy strategies and policies for specific households. Full article

Building energy consumption is affected by several factors, including its physical characteristics, indoor/outdoor environment, and appliances. However, the occupant’s behaviour that governs and controls the building’s energy consumption must not be forgotten. In most of the earlier studies, occupant behaviour is modelled as static or fixed occupancy profiles. These profiles are acknowledged as the main source of discrepancy between the predicted and actual building energy performance. Several studies have been performed to identify the occupant’s sustainable energy behaviours related to social, climate, economic, regulations, and personal aspects. However, building indoor configuration such as space-layout planning has various impacts on occupant sustainable energy consumption behaviour as indoor space layout might affect occupant’s movement and presence. Furthermore, it may link to the occupant’s particular activities or actions that happen at a specific position within an indoor space. So, this study used an Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) approach to understanding the influence of indoor layout configuration on occupant energy consumption behaviour in residential households in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The study has shown a considerable amount of building energy savings while using a sustainable space layout configuration. The simulated energy consumption data from the ABM model was further validated using the real data collected from the available smart meters in the case study location. Thus, the study will assist in recognizing the proper space layout arrangements with occupant choice and their behavioural intentions of residential building energy savings for low-income economies. Full article

Energy communities, also known as renewable or citizen energy communities, can be a source of innovative aggregation solutions at the local level. The unleashed flexibility potential of households could provide self-balancing services for local energy communities or create new revenue streams for local flexibility aggregators. This paper proposes a methodology for the assessment of the energy savings potential of residential customers, factoring in local climatological conditions, energy consumption patterns, and building energy performance when the available input data are scarce. For baseline consumption modelling, the correlation between historical energy consumption data collected from a survey, building energy performance parameters, and the availability of flexibility assets was determined, taking into account the inconsistency between the quantity and quality of collected data from various consumers. For this purpose, a modelling approach using calculations for “Agent” buildings was used. In this way, each building user was assigned to a specific “Agent” with dedicated consumption characteristics for a flexibility asset. The capacities engaged in a flexibility programme were modelled according to the available flexibility assets, whilst the duration of a flexibility demand response (DR) event was considered a function of building energy performance characteristics, and consequently, activation strategies were applied. Additionally, several energy savings activation scenarios were modelled to interlink technical and behavioural constraints of household consumers. These constraints restrict the available flexibility, thus influencing the possibility of daily repetitions of a DR event and increasing savings with flexibility event activation. This model is intended to optimise flexibility assets provided by the end-users and, in this manner, deliver permanent energy savings, offering new business opportunities for aggregators or local energy communities. The novelty of this research is the recognition of an aggregator as a permanent energy savings provider, even if the obtained savings are very conservative per individual flexibility asset. Nevertheless, if properly aggregated and identified, the obtained savings could create novel business opportunities for a local aggregator. Full article