Understanding energy-saving behaviors in the American workplace: A unified theory of motivation, opportunity, and ability

Occupant behavior has a significant impact on building energy consumption. To reduce energy use in office buildings, various intervention strategies have been investigated to promote energy-saving behaviors among occupants. However, the influential factors of these behaviors have not been fully understood in existing studies. To fill this gap, this study proposes an integrated Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) framework which incorporates social-psychological constructs from the Norm Activation Model and the Theory of Planned Behavior to investigate the determinants of energy-saving behaviors in the office environment. An online survey is distributed to collect data from multiple office buildings across the U.S. Results of the structural equation model (n = 612) show that opportunity has the strongest effect on energy-saving behaviors, followed by motivation and ability. In addition, motivation mediates the effect of opportunity and ability. This proposed framework offers an approach for decision-makers to design effective energy interventions based on the constraining factors in the targeted buildings.