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The purpose of this paper is to outline an early adopter “low energy” domestic dwelling, one of the social houses built by a collaboration between a university, the local council. The origins of this project are from the early days of interest in sustainable housing, the 1970s. The dwellings were innovative and built to what became known as “the Salford design” which performed to unusual specifications, using approximately 75 per cent less energy than the UK average for space heating and over 40 per cent less than for houses built to what were then the standard building regulations.

A qualitative and interpretative stance was deemed to be the most appropriate. Within that lens, interviews were chosen as the primary research instrument.

A marked feature of the results is the variation in energy consumption by different households. A Salford-designed house could be habitable throughout the year without any space heating at all, comfortable at 10 per cent and very comfortable at 25 per cent of normal consumption.

As there continues to be interest and commitment to reducing energy – not just from the United Kingdom but also on a worldwide scale – the United Nations Conference of the Parties known as COP 22 (2016) met in Morocco to take forward many of the initiatives outlined in the Paris Agreement 2015. It is of interest, then, that the latest set of interviews showed that the houses built to the innovative and original 1970s’ Salford design principles, protected by highly insulated well-sealed envelopes, are even presently functioning at a relatively low energy threshold.

This paper aims to assess the long-run drivers and short-term dynamics of real house prices in Sweden for 1986Q1 to 2016Q4. More specifically, the author examines the extent to which real house prices are determined by affordability, demographics and asset price factors.

The author conducts a cointegration analysis and applies a vector autoregression model to examine the long- and short-run responsiveness of Swedish real house prices to a number of key categories of fundamental variables.

The empirical results indicate that house prices will increase in the long run by 1.04 per cent in response to a 1 per cent increase in household real disposable income, whereas real after-tax mortgage interest and real effective exchange rates show average long-term effects of approximately – 8 and – 0.7 per cent, respectively. In addition, the results show that the growth of real house prices is affected by growth in mortgage credit, real after-tax mortgage interest rates and disposable incomes in the short run, whereas the real effective exchange rate is the most significant determinant of Swedish real house appreciation.

The impact of the two lending restrictions been implemented after the financial crisis – the mortgage cap in October 2010 and the amortization requirement in June 2016 – are ineffective to stabilize the housing market. This suggests that macroprudential measures designed to ease pressure on housing prices and reduce risks to financial stability need to focus on these fundamentals and address the issues of tax deductibility on mortgage rates and the gradual implementation of debt-to-income limits to contain mortgage demand and improve households’ resilience to shocks.

This study aims to introduce management students to climate change by providing them with an opportunity to address it in their own lives, through a class exercise.

An in-class exercise was designed, carried out and described in this study. Student teams were assigned different questions on how to address major causes of climate change. Each team did research to generate answers, and ranked their answers based on the speed of implementation. Teams reported their answers to the class. The instructor facilitated a debriefing session, during which all responses were ranked with respect to other variables, including cost savings, time savings and lifestyle fit. This exercise uses few resources and can be adapted to different time lengths and teaching/learning formats (e.g. on-ground, virtual, asynchronous online).

This exercise can help students to gain an understanding of climate change and its causes and complexities. Students learn how to implement a diverse set of personal actions to mitigate climate change; these can start in the present and continue throughout their lives. In addition, this exercise may help students to make the leap from individual climate change mitigation practices to organizational and societal practices, when they are in the position to do so as future leaders.

Although classes, exercises, and assignments ask management students to consider issues such as climate change at the organizational level, this individual-level exercise can allow students with limited organizational experience to engage more quickly with climate change and better understand organizational and societal implications in the future. That is, if students first understand how to address climate change in their own lives, they may more effectively transfer and apply that understanding at organizational and societal levels and ultimately synthesize solutions to address climate change in the world.

Accurate values for infiltration rate are important to reliably estimate heat losses from buildings. Infiltration rate is rarely measured directly, and instead is usually estimated using algorithms or data from fan pressurisation tests. However, there is growing evidence that the commonly used methods for estimating infiltration rate are inaccurate in UK dwellings. Furthermore, most prior research was conducted during the winter season or relies on single measurements in each dwelling. Infiltration rates also affect the likelihood and severity of summertime overheating. The purpose of this work is to measure infiltration rates in summer, to compare this to different infiltration estimation methods, and to quantify the differences.

Fifteen whole house tracer gas tests were undertaken in the same test house during spring and summer to measure the whole building infiltration rate. Eleven infiltration estimation methods were used to predict infiltration rate, and these were compared to the measured values. Most, but not all, infiltration estimation methods relied on data from fan pressurisation (blower door) tests. A further four tracer gas tests were also done with trickle vents open to allow for comment on indoor air quality, but not compared to infiltration estimation methods.

The eleven estimation methods predicted infiltration rates between 64 and 208% higher than measured. The ASHRAE Enhanced derived infiltration rate (0.41 ach) was closest to the measured value of 0.25 ach, but still significantly different. The infiltration rate predicted by the “divide-by-20” rule of thumb, which is commonly used in the UK, was second furthest from the measured value at 0.73 ach. Indoor air quality is likely to be unsatisfactory in summer when windows are closed, even if trickle vents are open.

The findings have implications for those using dynamic thermal modelling to predict summertime overheating who, in the absence of a directly measured value for infiltration rate (i.e. by tracer gas), currently commonly use infiltration estimation methods such as the “divide-by-20” rule. Therefore, infiltration may be overestimated resulting in overheating risk and indoor air quality being incorrectly predicted.

Direct measurement of air infiltration rate is rare, especially multiple tests in a single home. Past measurements have invariably focused on the winter heating season. This work is original in that the tracer gas technique used to measure infiltration rate many times in a single dwelling during the summer. This work is also original in that it quantifies both the infiltration rate and its variability, and compares these to values produced by eleven infiltration estimation methods.

The adverse impacts of climate change coupled with rapid informal urbanization in the Southern African region are increasing the vulnerability of already sensitive population groups. Consequently, these urban regions are highly vulnerable to urban heat island effects and heatwaves due to exogenous and endogenous factors. While the dynamic interplay between the built environment, climate and response strategies is known, this paper highlights the lived experience of informal settlement residents. It presents work from a project undertaken in Melusi, an informal settlement in Tshwane, South Africa, as a multi-disciplinary project focusing on improving the local resilience to climate change associated heat stress.

Following a mixed method approach, a semi-structured observational analysis of the spatial layout and material articulation of selected dwellings along with the continuous monitoring and recording of their indoor environments were undertaken.

The paper presents the research results in terms of the dwelling characteristics, as spatial and material-use strategies and documented heat stress exposure in these structures. The findings highlight that informal dwellings perform poorly in all cases due to endogenous factors and that inhabitants experience extreme heat stress conditions for between 6 and 10 h daily during the peak summer period.

Currently, there are little empirical data on the heat stress residents living in informal settlements in Southern Africa are experiencing. This article provides insight into the indoor environments of informal dwellings and hopes to contribute future guidelines or heat health policies.

This paper aims to explore the impact of a recent earthquake activity on house prices and their spatial distribution in the Istanbul housing market.

The paper uses a multi-level approach within an event study framework to model changes in the pattern of house prices in Istanbul. The model allows the isolation of the effects of earthquake risk and explores the differential impact in different submarkets in two study periods – one before (2007) and one after (2012) recent earthquake activity in the Van region, which although in Eastern Turkey served to alter the perceptions of risk through the wider geographic region.

The analysis shows that there are variations in the size of price discounts in submarkets resulting from the differential influence of a recent earthquake activity on perceived risk of damage. The model results show that the spatial impacts of these changes are not transmitted evenly across the study area. Rather it is clear that submarkets at the cheaper end of the market have proportionately larger negative impacts on real estate values.

The robustness of the models would be enhanced by the addition of further spatial levels and larger data sets.

The methods introduced in this study can be used by real estate agents, valuers and insurance companies to help them more accurately assess the likely impacts of changes in the perceived risk of earthquake activity (or other environmental events such as flooding) on the formation of house prices in different market segments.

The application of these methods is intended to inform a fairer approach to setting insurance premiums and a better basis for determining policy interventions and public investment designed to mitigate potential earthquake risk.

The paper represents an attempt to develop a novel extension of the standard use of hedonic models in event studies to investigate the impact of natural disasters on real estate values. The value of the approach is that it is able to better capture the granularity of the spatial effects of environmental events than the standard approach.

This paper aims to investigate the presence of a housing bubble using Swedish data from 1986Q1-2016Q4 by using various methods.

First, the authors use affordability indicators and asset-pricing approaches, including the price-to-income ratio, price-to-rent ratio and user cost, supplemented by a qualitative discussion of other factors affecting house prices. Second, the authors use cointegration techniques to compute the fundamental (or long-run) price, which is then compared with the actual price to test the degree of Sweden’s housing price bubble during the studied period. Third, they apply the univariate right-tailed unit root test procedure to capture bursting bubbles and to date-stamp bubbles.

The authors find evidence for rational housing bubbles with explosive behavioral components beginning in 2004. These bubbles do not continuously diverge but instead periodically revert to their fundamental value. However, the deviation is persistent, and without any policy correction, it takes decades for real house prices to return to equilibrium.

The policy implication is that monetary policy designed to contain mortgage demand and thereby prevent burst episodes in the housing market must address external imbalances, as revealed in real exchange rate undervaluation. It is unlikely that current policies will stop the rise of house prices, as the growth of mortgage credit, improvement in Sweden’s international competitiveness and the path of interest rates are much more important factors.