Towards reliable building interventions: A causal and immersive virtual environment-based framework

Buildings contribute to global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, making energy-efficient interventions important for sustainable development. In practice, the design and evaluation of such interventions commonly rely on correlation-based predictive models, which describe statistical associations but provide limited insight into the causal mechanisms linking environmental changes, occupant perceptions, and behavioral responses. As a result, interventions may produce outcomes that differ from expectations. This study introduces the Occupant-Centric Building Intervention Framework (OCBIF) designed to assess effectiveness of building energy interventions related to OBI. It establishes causal relationships among environments, occupant characteristics and perceptions, and adaptive actions by adopting the Driver–Need–Action–System (DNAS) concept. It employs Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) to simulate building contexts to allow observations related to occupant-building interaction (OBI) for final validation of building interventions. The case study is demonstrated using scenarios related to building interventions aiming to reduce heater uses. The causal analysis yields insights into thermal comfort and OBI. The results show that thermal sensation mediates the effect of indoor temperature on heater interaction, while age and system accessibility are additional causal influences on OBI. This causal structure explains why changes in indoor temperature do not translate directly into behavioral responses and why identical thermal interventions can lead to heterogeneous outcomes across occupants. Findings revealed that OCBIF bridged gaps in building intervention research providing actionable insights for stakeholders to design interventions enhancing energy efficiency while considering OBI.