Research On The Acceptance And Willingness To Pay For Green Residential Buildings Based On Residents’ Heterogeneity

Residents’ acceptance and willingness to pay matter a lot for promoting green residential buildings.However,existing researches lack in this area,especially,they are inadequate in combining and studying the two themes in a holistic view and incorporating residents’ heterogeneity,which is the focus of this study.We conduct two surveys among residents in Tianjin urban area(hereafter referred to as non-Eco-city residents)and Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city(hereafter referred to as Eco-city residents),with the aim of studying the acceptance and willingness to pay for green residential buildings based on residents’ heterogeneity.The dissertation has contributed to the existing researches in the following several aspects:1.This study develops an extended Technology Acceptance Model(TAM)to explain residents’ acceptance of green residential buildings,and examine it in two surveys conducted among non-Eco-city residents(N=330)and Eco-city residents(N=345)in Tianjin,China.The results show that knowledge about green residential buildings,trust in the green building certification process,perceived usefulness from green certified residential buildings,attitude towards green certified residential buildings,and general environmental awareness measured by the New Ecological Paradigm(NEP)scale,are the significant psychological determinants of residents’ acceptance of green certified residential buildings.It is also found that lacking subjective knowledge and social trust in our surveyed residents could be the psychological barriers to their acceptance of green certified residential buildings.2.Heterogeneity of residents’ acceptance of green residential buildings is studied by using Latent Class Cluster Model.Results show that non-Eco-city residents can be classified to three types according to their acceptance heterogeneity,they are ―High Acceptance Residents‖,―Lacking in Knowledge and Trust residents‖,and ―Wait and See residents‖,which account for 52%,30% and 18% respectively.Policy interventions are needed for the last two types.It’s highly necessary to equip residents with more knowledge about green residential buildings and enhance their social trust in the green building certification process.Heterogeneity of Eco-city residents is more simple,they have only ―High Acceptance‖ type,and ―Wait and See‖ type,which account for 82% and 18% respectively.Residents in Eco-city report high level of green certified building knowledge but lower level of trust in green building certification process.3.Using ordinal Latent Class Regression Analysis,the thesis studies the level,heterogeneity and determinants of residents’ willingness to pay(WTP)in Eco-city.Results show that their mean WTP is 1918.3(Chinese Yuan)per square meters.There are three types of residents according to their heterogeneity,they are ―low WTP residents bound by income and perceived usefulness‖,―high WTP residents motived by income and perceived usefulness‖ and ―middle WTP residents motivated by perceived usefulness and bounded by distrust‖.As policy implication,we suggest that for non-eco-city residents,the policy priority is to develop resident-oriented interventions and enhance their acceptance,instead of willingness to pay.For the Eco-city residents,it is high necessary to guarantee and improve the green operation after green design and conferred with green label,which can enhance their occupancy satisfaction hence increase their willingness to pay.