Do green buildings need green occupants?

Mixed-mode: these words are synonymous with the world's emergent 'green' buildings, heralded as low carbon buildings of the future. While the technical efficiency of such buildings is important, the well-being, productivity, (dis)comfort, general satisfaction of the occupants, as well as environmental attitudes and beliefs, is in itself, necessarily important. Post-occupancy evaluations for occupant satisfaction, and New Ecological Paradigm questionnaires, measuring levels of environmental concern, were conducted between March and April 2009 in two academic office buildings at Macquarie University. Upon analysis, significantly higher environmental attitudes were present for occupants possessing greater tolerance of their building's thermal environment. This paper hypothesises that occupants valuing their building highly possess greater pro-environmental attitudes compared to those valuing their building poorly, and thus provides evidence supporting the link between environmental attitudes and occupant satisfaction within green buildings.