The role of parenthood in worry about overheating in homes in the UK and the US and implications for energy use: An online survey study

Climate change brings an increase in temperatures and a higher frequency of heatwaves. Both have been linked to a rise in suicide rates and violent crime on a population level. However, little is known about the link between mental health and ambient temperatures on an individual level and for particular subgroups. Overheating poses health risks to children and disturbs sleep; leading to the expectation that parents are more worried about their homes getting too hot than non-parents. Two online survey studies (N = 1000 each) were conducted in the UK and the US to understand to what extent parents and an age-matched comparison group without children are worried about overheating and how they differ in their mitigation actions. Findings did not support the main hypotheses around greater overheating worry amongst parents in general, mothers or those with very young children. However, parents indicated a greater likelihood to upgrade or install air-conditioning (US) and to get electric fans (UK). Parents in the UK indicated using more mitigation options to cope with overheating than non-parents. Parents in the US, whilst not reporting doing more actions, were more likely to use air-conditioning to deal with overheating than non-parents. Finally, those parents who mentioned health impacts on children as a reason for worry about overheating, were more concerned about overheating than parents who had other reasons than children’s health as a reason for being concerned about overheating. In summary, parental status might have implications for cooling energy use and concern for children’s health might increase overheating worry; however, many open questions remain

"My home is my castle - and it better be warm" – Difficulties in reducing energy consumption in the household

One of the biggest challenges of today is to achieve environmental sustainability. Reducing energy consumption in the private realm is of prime importance, considering that 27% of all carbon emission stem from domestic households (HM Government, 2006). Space heating reflects the largest share of private energy use with 53%, followed by appliances and lighting (22%) and water heating (20%), making these the most relevant areas to address (HM Government, 2006). In fact, in recent years, most energy suppliers have started to provide their customers with information on how to reduce energy consumption, and gadgets such as energy monitors are easily available. Yet, consumption needs to decrease further to meet the ambitious targets defined by the Climate Change Act 2008 (http://www.theccc.org.uk/about-the-ccc/climate-change-act). One question that arises is how much energy consumption can be reduced without impacting negatively on personal comfort. We addressed the question what comfort means and how people feel about their level of comfort in a study among social housing tenants in England. Participants were asked to define what comfort in the home means to them and how satisfied they were with the comfort their home provided. In a survey, their current behavioural practises with regard to energy consumption were assessed, together with a variety of related variables, such as perceived knowledge on energy saving and environmental awareness Participants also gave information on how they operated their heating system. The data was completed by assessing the stock condition and average energy consumption. Preliminary data show that “warmth” was the most important aspect of comfort, followed by security, space and privacy, and cleanliness. Likewise, discomfort was most often ascribed to coldness and drafts. The questions on current practices revealed that most participants took positive actions to reduce their energy consumption, such as turning off appliances completely. The study also revealed that many participants were unsure on how to most efficiently operate the heating system. Taken together, three important factors emerged that make energy reduction in the household difficult: Firstly, personal comfort is mainly determined by warmth. Secondly, behaviours other than cutting back on heat are already performed to a large extent. Thirdly, information on how to best operate the heating system are missing. The implications of these results for landlords and energy suppliers are discussed, with emphasis on how to use this information to reduce energy consumption in social housing

The role of parenthood in worry about overheating in homes and implications for energy use - two online survey studies from the UK and the US

Climate change brings an increase in temperatures and a higher frequency of heatwaves. Both have been linked to a rise in suicide rates and violent crime on a population level. However, little is known about the link between mental health and ambient temperatures on an individual level and for particular subgroups. Overheating poses health risks to children and can cause disturbed sleep; leading to the expectation that parents are more worried about their homes getting too hot than non-parents. We conducted two online survey studies (N = 1000 each) in the UK and the US to understand to what extent parents and an age-matched comparison group without children are worried about overheating and how they differ in their mitigation actions. Findings did not support the main hypotheses around greater overheating concern amongst parents in general, mothers or those with very young children. However, parents indicated a greater likelihood to upgrade / install air-conditioning (US) and to get electric fans (UK). Parents in the UK indicated using more mitigation options to cope with overheating and parents in the US, whilst not reporting doing more actions, were more likely to use air-conditioning to deal with overheating than non-parents. Finally, those parents who mentioned health impacts for children as a reason for concern about overheating, were more concerned about overheating than parents who had other reasons than children’s health as a reason for being concerned about overheating. In summary, being or becoming a parent might have implications for cooling energy use and parental concern; however, many open questions remain

Emotions and thermal comfort – feeling warmer when feeling happier

Providing thermal comfort (TC) in buildings typically uses around 30% of developed nations’ energy and carbon emissions. Thermal comfort is provided by constraining ambient temperatures to within narrowly defined ‘comfortable’ ranges traditionally based on physiological heat balance models of the human body. Our understanding of what drives thermal comfort perception is still limited however, and while physiological parameters have been identified for decades, research on psychological parameters of comfort is still rather limited. The basic emotions have not been studied in relationship to thermal comfort, so in this study, we investigated the relationship between emotional state, i.e. feeling happy or sad, and thermal comfort perception. A recent study has shown that the various basic emotions are associated with specific perceived activation state of the body (Nummenmaa, Glerean, Hari, & Hietanen, 2014) which we hypothesized would translate in different comfort states. Feeling happy would, through higher perceived bodily activation, translate to feeling warmer or more thermally comfortable - whereas feeling sad would lead to feeling colder or less thermally comfortable, because of the associated perceived lower bodily activation. We designed an experimental study using Amazon Mechanical Turk (Paolacci, Chandler, & Ipeirotis, 2010). N = 300 Turkers were recruited and randomly assigned to recall either a happy autobiographical episode or a sad one to induce a happy or sad emotional state (Briñol, Petty, & Barden, 2007). The valid sample encompassed N = 273. A manipulation check revealed that the emotional manipulation worked. There was a significant effect of emotional state on the standard ASHRAE comfort survey question “How are you feeling in this moment from 1 (cold) to 7 (hot)?”. Those feeling happy reported feeling significantly warmer than those feeling sad [t(269) = 3.66, p < .001]. However, there was no difference in the two other outcomes variables, estimate of room temperature and rating of how thermally comfortable one felt - the latter also being a standard thermal comfort survey question. We conclude that there is some evidence for a relationship between emotional state and thermal perception in feeling of warm or cold that warrants further research on this topic. The data also indicate a dissociation between various thermal comfort related outcomes measures, posing a methodological challenge that needs addressing

Impacts of a changed atmosphere: Do increased CO₂ levels decrease human cognitive performance?

Introduction. Climate change has severe consequences for humans, such as health impacts resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, i.e. pollution, and impacts from a changing climate, such as extreme heat and flooding. There is a third, neglected, category that covers impacts from the changed atmosphere per se, i.e. a higher concentration of CO2. Do increased atmospheric CO2 levels influence human cognition negatively? Method. We carried out a rapid evidence assessment. Identified keywords were searched for in title, abstract, and keywords in Scopus and Web of Science. Results were imported into the systematic review software EPPI-Reviewer, and screened according to prespecified criteria. Results Five journal articles were retained after screening. The level of reported details did not allow a meta-analysis; instead, results were descriptively interpreted. All studies took place in environmental chambers in which pure CO2 was inserted to reach levels between 500 ppm and 5000 ppm. Two studies did not find any effect of CO2 on performance, but three studies found that cognitive performance decreased under higher CO2 concentrations. Conclusions. The outcome that human performance might decrease under higher CO2 is already in itself alarming but would have wide-reaching implications on energy use, e.g. of heating and ventilation systems