Structural Equation Modeling for Comfort and Thermal Sensation

Abstract

As an experimental study for balancing daily human comfort and energy saving, this paper describes a structural equation modeling for questionnaire data. The goal is to clarify the causal relation among thermal comfort and thermal sensation of body parts. The experimentation data include 22 experimental subjects' votes for their feeling on nine conditions. There are four alternatives for variables in modeling: (1) thermal sensation vote (TSV) of time t, (2) TSV of time t and time t-10, (3) TSV of time t and its change, (4) change of TSV. Then numerical study got three findings as follows: (1) The fourth model dealing with the changes of thermal sensations has the fittest indices, (2) Change of thermal sensations of buttock and chest have great impact on comfort, and (3) Change of fatigue impression has no relation with thermal sensations.