DETERMINANTS OF HEATING AND AIR CONDITIONING BEHAVIOR, AND ACCEPTABLE RANGES OF TEMPERATURE BASED ON BEHAVIOR : Study on residents' behavior contributing to formation of indoor climate, Part 1

Abstract

In this study, first, the relations between the ratio of subjects (housewives) who were using equipments for controlling indoor climate in living rooms and the temperature in living rooms where those equipments were not used, were tested using data recorded by the subjects at eight times of a day, namely every two hours from 8 a. m. to 10 p. m.. As for air conditioning and heating, for both a daytime and a nighttime, the linear relations between the above ratios and the temperature were significant at 0. 001 or 0. 005 level, and intercepts of obtained regression lines for two time periods were significantly different from each other at 0. 01 level. Second, we calculated the another ratio of the amount of time when the equipments had been used to the amount of time when a subject had stayed in each type of rooms doing each type of acts. For example, it was proved that the above ratio for air conditioning significantly depended on both the types of acts and rooms. Last, the temperature ranges, where at least 80 % and 50 % subjects did not use their equipments, were compared with the other ranges where 80 % and 50 % occupants feel acceptable, which had been proposed by Gagge et al., respectively. It can be seen that for a- nighttime, the former ranges, namely ranges based on behavior, corresponded to the latter ranges, namely ranges based on thermal sensation, to some extent, but that for a daytime, the former ranges were considerably wider than the latter ranges.