THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THERMAL COMFORT AND USER SATISFACTION IN HOTDRY CLIMATES

Reviews on thermal comfort approaches and studies including field stud ies, laboratory studies and multi-dimensional scaling, have been carri ed out. It appears that the tendency of current research is towards mo re sophistication in measuring and relating objective to subjective do mains of thermal comfort. The desire for increased accuracy has result ed in a situation where thermal fields have been studied in isolation from behavioural ones and independently of the environmental control s ystem. This paper has encapsulated thermal comfort, the environmental control system and overall user satisfaction in two propositions, whic h were subjected to an empirical test in a sample from two different h ouse typologies. Statistical analysis of user responses and climatic d ata revealed significant correlations between thermal comfort and the ability to effect environmental control, and thermal comfort and overa ll user satisfaction with the house form. Other variables, such as pri vacy were not significantly correlated with overall user satisfaction. (C) 1997, Elsevier Science Ltd.