Assessment of occupants’ adaptive capacity: a case study in northern Guizhou of China

The thermal comfort of rural residents is a major issue related to people’s livelihood. Due to differences in climatic factors (e.g. local climate) and non-climatic factors (such as building structures, economic and social–cultural levels, living habits and availability of environmental control) between rural and urban areas, participants have different thermal requirements for a given thermal environment. This difference means that thermal comfort standards that consider only urban conditions may not be applicable to rural situations. Therefore, a thermal comfort field study was conducted on the thermal comfort of traditional residential houses with natural ventilation located in rural areas of northern Guizhou, China. This study aims to understand the indoor thermal conditions and perceptions of occupants in rural areas, with a total of 513 subjects that participated in a questionnaire survey. Most survey respondents accept the thermal environment in which they reside, even if the indoor temperature is not within the recommended thermal comfort range specified by international standards such as Ashrae 55. The adaptive predicted mean vote is established using the least-squares method. The adaptive coefficient λ representing the adaptive capacity is twice the recommended coefficient of the Chinese standard, GB/T 50785-2012. This confirms that rural residents have a stronger adaptability to cold conditions in winter. The findings are beneficial for improving thermal comfort and carbon dioxide emission reduction for traditional residential houses in rural areas of northern Guizhou, China.