A Review of Characteristics and Trends of Indoor Environmental Comfort and Occupant Behaviour Based on Bibliometrics

Understanding the relationship between indoor environmental comfort and occupant behaviour is beneficial to promote the development of energy saving of buildings and increase the occupant’s satisfaction towards their housing. This paper reviews 4336 literature in this field by bibliometrics. At the same time, it makes a systematic analysis of the research hotspots, research characteristics, development contexts and future trends within the theme. The result indicates that thermal comfort has been a long-standing research hotspot, but little attention has been paid to occupant behaviour. The early research into indoor environment was based on climate chamber experiments and the design of building equipment systems. Subsequently, researchers began to focus on the relationship between occupant behaviour management and indoor environment, and the research objects have been enriched. The multi-objective optimization and data mining of machine learning are at the frontier of research. The research value has shifted from building energy saving buildings to green buildings that are comfortable for human to live in.