Adoption of Residential Green Building Practices: Understanding the Role of Familiarity.

Abstract

Conventional homebuilding practices account for significant environmental effects. While green building practices can offset many of these impacts, the extent to which such approaches are used is too small to have a marked effect. Yet increasing the adoption of green homebuilding practices faces major challenges. The current work looks at residential green building in order to understand how familiarity plays a role in the adoption of these practices.

This research consists of three studies. The first study uses Kaplan and Kaplan s Reasonable Person Model (RPM) to examine the promotion and adoption of green building practices. The latter two studies focus on the role of familiarity as a particularly salient aspect of the information processing approach. In the second study, interviews with 19 builders in Michigan and 32 in Oregon are used to analyze familiarity with green building. In the third study, a survey of 171 U.S. builders, structural equation modeling is used to test the relationships among sources of information about green building, familiarity, and use of green practices.

The results provide strong evidence for the role of familiarity in builders use of green practices. The RPM approach illustrates how informational needs relate to the adoption of green practices. Findings from the interviews show that increased green building experience relates to a shift in familiarity from building and project issues to conceptual and behavioral issues. The structural equation models demonstrate that familiarity strongly relates to the use of green building practices. Furthermore, familiarity is found to mediate various sources of information on the use of green practices. This work leads to several recommendations. Familiarity can be incorporated in the design of communications programs to augment builders receptivity to adopting new practices. Increasing the availability of experiences that develop familiarity may facilitate learning about green building. Finding ways to develop builders familiarity with the system level, rather than building level, dimensions of green building may prove particularly useful for supporting the adoption of more innovative practices. Finally, a broader and longer-term view of the objectives of green building programs may be useful for supporting widespread change in builders practices.