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International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7 (4.38) (2018) 1270-1274
International Journal of Engineering & Technology
Website: www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJET
Research paper
Residents’ Health Awareness of the Sustainability of Indoor Air
Quality in High Rise Building
Dyah Nurwidyaningrum1, Setyo S. Moersidik2, Emirhadi Suganda3 and Haryoto Kusnoputranto4
123School of Environmental Science
University of Indonesia
Jakarta, Indonesia
nurwidyaningrum@yahoo.com
4Department of Environmental Health
Faculty of Public Health, University of Indonesia
Depok, Indonesia
*Corresponding author E-mail: haryoto_k@yahoo.com
Abstract
This study was concerned with the residents’ health awareness of their behavior which affected indoor air quality (IAQ) in high rise
building in Jakarta, Indonesia. This analysis was aimed to describe the difference between the strength of the influence of residents’
dimension to IAQ in unit with knowledge variable and that of without knowledge variable. The behavior based on health knowledge
became the parameter of health awareness. The descriptive result indicated that the residents in Rusunami high rise building were well-
educated people but not all of them had good behavior. Participants whose occupations are related to health tended to take care of indoor
air quality better than those from other occupation. With the structural equation modeling (SEM), the construct of residents’ dimension
was formulated based on physical and psychological comfort, as well as involving the healthy life participation and pollution activities.
It was found that this combination drove behavioral change to IAQ in high rise building. Partial Least Square analysis showed that the
knowledge of IAQ could raise the effect of residents’ dimension to IAQ in unit from 15.2% to 16.6%.
Keywords: health awareness; High Rise Building; Indoor Air Quality; Residents’ Dimension; Residents’ Knowledge
1. Introduction
Previous studies revealed that formal program for the residents
and the knowledge of residents habit were predicted to be able to
improve human’s health for minimizing the consumption of
natural resources and correcting the indoor comfort [1-3].
Unfortunately, such studies indicated that behavioral change
through increasing the resident knowledge did not always obtain
the expected output. In reality, without some high supplementary
cost and effort, the residents’ awareness is unadequate [4]. In case
of the exposure behaviors, the resident knowledge are closely
related to the daily activities [5-6]. Initial investigations provided
that the residents with indoor air quality (IAQ) health awareness
were still polluting the unit, such as by smoking, eating disturbing
odor food, and using chemical fragrance. According to Maslow
theory of human motivation [7], without the manager completing
resident basic need, the residents’ health awareness can not be the
drive for IAQ sustainability in high rise building [8]. Thus, a study
emphasizing on the fulfillment of the residents’ basic needs:
physical and psychological comfort which influences IAQ besides
the residents’ participation and pollution activities is important.
High rise housing increases rapidly in urban area of developing
countries, so does in Jakarta. With the population growth rate of
1,09% on Central Bureau of Statistics in 2016, people in urban
area are encouraged to live in a high rise building. The important
thing to concern relating to the encouragement is that the health
risk in indoor is 2-5 times higher than that of outdoor [9]. Due to
indoor air pollution, the respiratory disease and mortality are
amongst the greatest environmental threats to health in the devel-
oping countries of Asia [10]. In developing countries, the recent
quantity of affordable and effective interventions for reducing the
risks related with exposure to indoor smoke from household ener-
gy technology is restricted [11]. In Jakarta, PM10 [12] and tobac-
co [13] are revealed as the pollutants that affect residents’ health
in the household as well as the apartment. Thus, in high rise
residential building, IAQ issues are very important because air
pollution from inside or outside the building is more quickly
spread to other units than that of in the horizontal housing.
According to the sustainability theory in order to achieve effective
IAQ in high rise building, the management needs to carry out the
balance of three aspects: environmental, social, and economic [9].
On the social aspect, many studies have revealed the behavioral
change through the resident perceptions of IAQ, the impact, and
the type activities that cause indoor pollution but only few that
have investigated the influence of residents’ knowledge on IAQ.
In the residential management, humans through behavioral change
hold a major role in keeping the healthy indoor [14-15] which also
give impact on the environmental, economic aspects, and the unity
of the sustainability of their lives [16].
The residents’ awareness through the health knowledge can be one
of the drives in the sustainability of IAQ because it encourages
behavioral change. It was hypothesized that if the participants had
received training for high performance building features, they
would be more satisfied with their environment than those who