Quality of life in green buildings: Are occupants of energy-efficent office buildings happier?

With increasing global warming discussions, energy efficiency of buildings gains in importance. This trend is accompanied by a surge in building automation, in particular in office buildings. In this context, this paper focuses on the impact of energy efficient buildings on quality of life of occupants. To this end, quality of life in office buildings of differing degrees of energy efficiency is analysed and acceptance of schemes to increase energy efficiency through building automation is investigated. Thereby, a literature review on quality of life and its constituting factors is provided. Moreover, factors influencing acceptance of technology are extracted. From literature, hypothesis are deducted and tested in a study with 1,443 occupants of office buildings. Results indicate that the relationship between energy efficiency of buildings and comfort of its occupants might be curvilinear (u-shaped). Moreover, perceived control is found to be an important factor influencing occupants’ comfort in a building. Consequences of these findings for energy efficient building are discussed.