Renovation and furnishing of dwellings and attitude to climate change, 2023

Most research on the impact of building users on the environment is focused on aspects of energy saving through the study of the use of lights, windows, heating, etc. But there are other behaviours and decisions that can have an even bigger carbon footprint, namely decisions related to the renovation and furnishing of buildings, such as replacing sofas or kitchens. Such actions receive less attention in the literature because they do not occur with as much frequency as turning off the lights and closing the windows. Aim of the survey was to understand the decisions of building users and to assess to what extent they take the environmental aspect into account when making decisions about renovations and furnishing of apartments. With web-based survey data on various characteristics of people's homes, residents' satisfaction with them, and important factors in the decision to renovate or renovate were collected. In the last part, authors were also interested in respondent's attitude towards the environment and climate change, in order to examine to what extent Slovenian consumers, take environmental aspects into account when deciding on the renovation or furnishing of their apartments, including the purchase of new furniture (more about the preparation of the questionnaire in the publication "Poročilo o anketi o obnavljanju in opremljanju stanovanj ter odnosu do podnebnih sprememb"). The survey, which was answered by 1009 people, was carried out with two objectives. Firstly, as a case study within the post-doctoral project "Using questionnaires for measuring the attitudes and behaviour of building users" (ARIS Z5-1879), where the research goal was to develop and evaluate survey tools to understand the needs and wishes of building users. Second, as a market research within the project "Revival of traditional industry: model of open innovation in the Slovenian furniture sector" (European Commission, within the InnoRenew project, Horizon2020 program (H2020 WIDESPREAD-2-Teaming:#739574).