Saudi Community Perception and Acceptance of Sustainable Buildings

Abstract

Sustainable buildings are the types of buildings that offer remarkable benefits to the environment, society and economy. It is rather new area of research especially for Arab countries including Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the targets of this study were to assess the knowledge of Saudi community members on sustainable buildings and to evaluate their acceptance to retrofit their traditional homes to become greener and sustainable.
Questionnaire was designed and distributed amongst Saudi community members in Saudi Arabia, city of Riyadh. Questionnaire papers were distributed to residents of different streets such Olia road, King Fahad road, and King Abdullah road. In addition, they were distributed amongst visitors of Kingdom Mall and Hayat Mall shopping centres. The total collected correct responses were 35 in total including male and female participants, of different age categories with different education levels. These responses are analysed using MS Excel software.
The results of this study demonstrated that more than half of the participants (57.1%) were not sure about the saving they could have by using retrofit works to their homes. Meanwhile, 25.7% of participants did not think that retrofit homes can result in energy and water cost savings. Only 17.1% of participants believed in retrofit benefits of energy and water cost reductions. The results also showed that the participants of age between 20 to 30 years were keen to use solar energy technologies for water heating in their homes. They were also keen to collect and reuse of rain water to conserve water and decrease water bills. The use of solar energy and reuse rain water was not welcomes by aged participants of 40 to 50 years. The results also showed that in case of no money available to do building retrofit, the majority of participants (37.1%) preferred to wait for governmental support funds.
Based on the results, it was highly recommended to increase the awareness of Saudis towards sustainable buildings through media mixes, TV programmes and newspapers. It is recommended for the government to allocate funds for Saudis to retrofit their houses.

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