CORRELATION BETWEEN PERSONALITIES AND THERMAL COMFORT PREFERENCES IN GREEN BUILDINGS

Abstract

This research study seeks to understand the relationship between individual personality and thermal comfort preferences. The increasing recognition of the importance of individualised thermal comfort models to optimise thermal comfort and energy efficiency has been of high relevance over the years. Existing studies have shown the practical significance of thermal comfort in improving occupant productivity and optimising the level of energy consumption for building occupants through various research methods. However, there is a lack of existing academic understanding on the connection between an individual's personality and their thermal comfort preferences.

The primary goal of this research is to construct a detailed and accurate understanding of an individual's personality and thermal comfort preferences in various environmental conditions to potentially uncover future ways to design building spaces.

The primary source of data (thermal comfort) for this paper is obtained from a micro- Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) thermal comfort field experiment using wearable technology conducted in the School of Design and Environment (SDE) in the National University of Singapore (NUS). The other source of the data (for personality) would be obtained through surveys (Big Five personality traits, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and the Highly Sensitive Personal Scale) to determine various facets of experiment participants' personalities. A total of 17 participants were recruited for this experiment.

By analysing the 17 participants' personality types and thermal comfort preferences, the author clustered them into five groups of people with similar personality types and their thermal comfort preferences. Future activity-based workspace (ABW) can be designed to cater to people with different personalities. Due to the small number of participants involved, the small sample size was unable to represent the whole population of Singapore. There are also many other factors that can affect an individuals' thermal comfort preferences, which were not measured in the experiment, and they can be mood, noise level, smell, etc.