Assessments of users' interactions with energy-efficient solutions: A systematic review

Despite new energy-efficient technologies in buildings, discrepancies between predicted and actual energy use continue to occur, mainly due to the complexity and variability of users' behaviour(s). Users' interactions with energy-efficient solutions need to be studied holistically to better understand the complexity of their behaviour. This systematic literature review was conducted to identify whether and to what extent researchers have considered the role of users, users' behaviour and behavioural drivers in interactions with buildings' energy-efficient solutions following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The review evaluated how focus (the studied context and users' interactions) and tools (the methods and theoretical background) were applied in the selected studies. The findings show that the majority of the studies neglected in-depth investigations of users' behavioural drivers. Only few studies considered psychological factors and applied related theories to identify drivers of energy-use behaviours. Behavioural drivers varied depending on types of energy-use behaviour, user and environmental characteristics. This review points to the need to further investigate the role of users in the interactions with energy-efficient solutions holistically and suggests possible implications for defining effective energy-saving strategies. Overall, the result of the reviewed papers was not consistent with affirming energy efficiency in energy-efficient buildings and therefore, emphasises a need for detailed analyses of users’ behavioural drivers together with physical and social contexts to reduce the mismatch between predicted and actual energy use