Evolution of Energy Culture in Energy Behavior Research in Buildings

Energy efficiency enhancement research on buildings has identified the necessity to focus on energy behaviour without limiting to the technical domain. In the energy behaviour research, energy culture has been identified as a comprehensive approach to examine energy efficiency in buildings which can subsume the important elements of the energy behaviour including technology and economics. The energy culture research approach driven by the empirical Energy Cultures Framework is relatively novel. Research on the status of application of the Energy Culture Framework is rare relating to buildings. Therefore, this literature review aims to examine the evolution of the energy culture research with a special focus on buildings and Energy Cultures Framework to examine the status of the current application. The literature review occupied a systematic review based on Web of Science (WOS) database. The results of the systematic review demonstrated an incremental trend in energy culture research in recent years in terms of the number of articles and citations. Usage of the framework evidenced in several contexts. However, a considerable amount of further research opportunities has been identified in different contexts of energy culture including households, organisations, industries, communities, and countries.