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Green residential societies
Promoting green buildings is a key measure to achieve sustainability in the built environment [1].
Green residential buildings (GRBs), also are often referred to as green apartments, green estates or green
homes, account for a substantial proportion (nearly 50%) of all green buildings in China. Promoting
residential buildings with a green label and setting relevant GRB regulations in the residential building
sector are seen as an effective way to boost environmental sustainability [2]. In the last decade, the
Chinese government has focused mainly on the supply side of GRB projects, with policies mainly
targeted at architecture, designers, developers, researchers and construction contractors. By contrast,
policy practice and academic research have not paid sufficient attention to issues and problems of the
demand for GRBs. The promotion of GRBs was therefore hindered by residents’ low acceptance [3] or
willingness to purchase [4], resulting in a mismatch between the production of GRBs and residents’
demand [5].
GRBs have emerged as an important part of the built environment in China, but they have not
been widely accepted by the public in many cities. The promotion of GRBs needs not only to attract
prospective customers to GRB schemes, but also to encourage existing occupants to choose GRBs in
Sustainability 2019, 11, 3590; doi:10.3390/su11133590 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
Sustainability 2019, 11, 3590 2 of 18
their future housing purchasing behaviors. Households (especially young couples) in Chinese cities
seldom buy a dwelling and stay there for the rest of their lives. Families often sell their home after a
few years and repurchase a bigger one in new residential areas, which provides a more comfortable
living condition, better accessibility to public and commercial services such as schools, nurseries,
medical centers, shops, restaurants, etc. Existing GRB homeowners often do the same and may also
buy extra properties either as a second home or for the use of their offspring in the future when they
grow up. Therefore understanding and motivating GRB residents’ repeated purchase behavior and
word-of-mouth advertising will promote the consumption of GRBs. Existing residents of GRBs may
leave the GRB market due to unsatisfied living experiences. Occupant satisfaction plays an important
role in repurchase intentions. Therefore, post occupancy evaluation (POE) in GRBs schemes can inform
the policy makers to formulate new strategies to promote GRBs. It is therefore of strategic importance
to obtain insights into residents’ repurchasing intentions and to understand the factors that influence
their decisions.
Although many studies have analyzed urban families’ intention to purchase and willingness to
pay for GRBs, few research projects have examined repurchase intentions of existing GRB occupants.
Several predictors are found to have positive impacts on residents’ purchase intentions or willingness
to pay, such as residents’ subjective knowledge [6], their trust in the relevant institutions/authorities
that are responsible for the objects [7], residents’ environmental attitudes [8] and perceived usefulness,
which measures the degree to which a person believes that an object would enhance his or her
benefits [9]. However, to the best of our knowledge, no studies focus on the repurchase intentions of
residents who already have purchased or who have living experience in GRBs.
The paper aims to provide new evidence on residential satisfaction of GRBs in mainland China by
addressing the following research questions: (1) What are the main factors that influence the repurchase
intentions of GRB occupants? Can the influencing factors of purchase intentions for prospective
GRB customers (residents who have not already bought GRB) identified in the current literature
explain the repurchase intentions of existing customers? (2) What role does residential satisfaction
play in repurchase decisions? We will also highlight the importance of repurchase behavior and
word-of-mouth advertising in promoting GRBs.
The remaining part of the article is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the literature review
and discusses the relationships of people’s perceived usefulness of GRBs, their satisfaction levels and
repurchase intention. Section 3 outlines the methodology and discusses the questionnaire design, data
collection, reliability and validity test and data analysis method. Section 4 presents the results, and
Section 5 discusses them and draws policy implications. Conclusions are summarized in Section 6.
2. Literature Review: Perceived Usefulness, Satisfaction and Repurchase Intention
Perceived usefulness is a typical independent variable (Davis’ Technology Acceptance Model [10])
and has been widely used to explain consumers’ purchase/repurchase decision-making and
behaviors [11]. GRBs are supposed to be more advanced than conventional buildings in terms
of: (1) Reducing waste and carbon emissions, hence they are environmentally friendly [1]; (2)
conserving energy and resources, economically benefit stakeholders hence they are economically
sustainable [12]; (3) improving social well-being in terms of comfort and health hence they are socially
sustainable [13]. We assumed that the more positive residents perceive the usefulness of GRB, the
more they will be likely to repurchase GRB.
H1: Residents’ perceived usefulness of GRBs has a positive impact on repurchase intentions (H1).
Unfortunately, there are many barriers for residents to overcome before they realize any usefulness
of GRBs. GRBs are public goods with externality [14], which refers to an unintended cost or benefit that
is not part of the transactions made in the market [15]. For example, the reduced carbon emission effect
of GRBs will benefit not only for its occupants who pay additional cost but also for other residents
living nearby. Their occupants cannot perceive this usefulness of GRBs directly and vividly in the short
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run. The extent to which the usefulness is perceived depends on residents’ altruism, especially their
views with respect to the growth of human societies, the fragility of nature’s balance, the possibility
of an ecological crisis and so on [16], which are reflected in people’s environmental attitudes and
knowledge. Previous studies have found that the perceived usefulness of green products is positively
affected by knowledge about the green value of products [9] and environmental attitudes [8].
The second usefulness feature: Energy or resource saving, is also hardly perceived by households,
especially in China [17]. The main property type in city is multi-family high-rise buildings, rather
than detached buildings/semi-detached buildings or bungalow as found in western countries like the
UK and US. Households have barely any control over the operation, maintenance or retrofitting of
many energy consuming equipment in their dwellings. All of these are done by the government and
property management companies. For example, winter heating is one of the main forms of household
energy consumption. However, in north China, central heating is provided by the municipalities [18].
Residents pay for the heating bills based on their floor area rather than their actual energy consumption.
Residents are not aware of the building’s envelop and heat conservation performance, which may be
one of the key merits of GRB design and operation, because they do not benefit from lower utility
bills. Moreover, bad property management services may ruin the reputation of GRBs by leading a gap
between the green design and operation. As for the third usefulness feature, it takes a considerable
length of time to perceive the enhanced social well-being that GRBs provide in terms of health condition.
The usefulness features of GRBs are highly dependent on the performance of the relevant
institutions/stakeholders (municipalities, property management companies, building energy
performance evaluation parties, etc.) [19]. Therefore, the extent to which residents feel they can
trust in these institutions’ experience and expertise with GRBs will positively affect residents’ perceived
usefulness of GRBs, hence their repurchase intentions. We therefore assume that residents’ trust
in relevant institutions has positive impacts on the perceived usefulness of GRBs, and occupants’
repurchase intention [20].
Therefore, we made the following assumptions:
Residents’ perceived usefulness of GRBs is influenced by their subjective knowledge of GRBs
(H2), trust in relevant institutions (H3) and their environmental attitudes (H4). These all have positive
impacts on the perceived usefulness of GRBs.
Residents’ repurchase intentions are influenced by their subjective knowledge of GRBs (H5), trust
in relevant institutions (H6) and environmental attitudes (H7). These all have positive impacts on
perceived usefulness of GRBs.
The role of satisfaction on repurchase intentions has been studied by many researchers. Some
recognize satisfaction as one of the exploratory variables for repurchase intentions, in the context
of online shopping [21], hotel service platforms [22] and so on. Satisfaction is an evaluation result
of past experiences [23]. Researchers differentiate between satisfaction as experience-based and
transaction-based [22,24]. Residential satisfaction reflects residents’ POE of their GRBs so it is
experience-based satisfaction. To date, occupant satisfaction surveys have been conducted mainly in
western countries but have not been well documented in China’s GRBs, and literature is inadequate
in explaining GRB residents’ repurchase intentions and answering whether residential satisfaction
contributes to the promoting of GRBs.
Surveys are a commonly used method to collect occupants’ satisfaction levels. They can provide
information about how GRBs satisfy the occupants and meet their needs. It is an important way to
assess the performance of GRBs from the perspective of their occupants [25], and to help improve the
quality of GRBs. In addition, the feedback on the causes and effects of low-performance issues relating
to GRBs can inform policymakers’ planning and management of GRBs throughout their lifespans [26].
In this paper experience-based satisfaction was studied, namely post-purchase satisfaction rather
than pre-purchase satisfaction and was based on residents’ evaluation of post-occupancy experiences.
The residential satisfaction here was an evaluation of their GRBs in the general sense, instead of
measuring specific characteristics such as energy saving, environmental friendliness, etc. We argued
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that the influence of overall residential satisfaction on repurchase intention of GRBs was not important
enough to serve as determinants. Instead, it might play a moderating role between determinants and
residents’ repurchase intentions of GRBs, which means residents with different residential satisfaction
features might cause heterogeneity among the coefficients.
Hypothesis: Residential satisfaction moderates the impacts of subjective knowledge, trust in
relevant institutions and environmental attitudes and makes them different for different clusters
of residents.
Based on the above hypothesis, we developed the research model shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Theoretical framework. Note: SK: Subjective knowledge; ST: Social trust; PU: Perceived
usefulness; EA: Environmental attitude; RI: Repurchase intention and Satis: Residential satisfaction.
3. Methodology
3.1. Case Study and Sampling Site
Since we focused on residents who had already purchased or who were living in GRBs, the
Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city (hereafter referred to as the Eco-city) was selected as the sampling
site. The eco-city is an international cooperation project between China and Singapore located 45
km from Tianjin inner city and 150 km from Beijing city. The vision behind its construction was the
establishment of a thriving city that is socially harmonious, environmentally friendly and resource
efficient. Designed to be practical, replicable and scalable, the Eco-city is meant to demonstrate the
determination of both countries to create a model city that will showcase sustainable development.
One of the key performance indexes (KPI) is the proportion of green buildings. All buildings in the
Eco-city must meet green building label standards, including all commercial buildings and residential
buildings. There are about 50,000 residents now living in the Eco-city, whose families have already
bought GRBs.
The Eco-city celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2018, coinciding with the 10-year anniversary of
China Green Building Label projects. However, to date there has been no research offering deep insights
into residential satisfaction, both within the Eco-city and beyond the Eco-city in China. Although
residential satisfaction in the Eco-city will mainly reflect performance of GRBs in the operation phase