Keywords: energy saving effects, path models, apartments in Korea.

With the rise of national income and living quality, household energy consumption has also continuously increased. Accordingly, energy consumption of apartments that account for over 50% of urban housing and has become the most prevalent housing type in Korea has continued to rise, which calls for energy saving more than ever before. Therefore, this paper suggests a path model to analyze the energy saving effects in residential areas of apartments.

The research content is as follows: first, it investigates the level of consciousness, knowledge and practice, (for households and for complexes), related to energy, and second, it ascertains the correlation among them, and lastly, it decides the route models for each variable.

To aid with research methods, literature consultation and surveys were conducted. Through the literature consultation, the variables related to energy saving behavior such as consciousness, knowledge and practice were found and a structured questionnaire that could ascertain those variables was developed to be distributed to the residents of an apartment complex. Forty residents were recruited one month before conducting the survey, and information references about energy saving and publicity activities including giving practical advice on energy saving were offered to them. The survey results were quantitatively analyzed using the SPSS and Amos 19.0 programs.

The result of this study is as follows: first, it was found that the important elements affecting energy saving behaviour are the enthusiastic attitude and the interest of people in the environment, and the energy related conscience and energy saving knowledge. Offering publicity activities and information could help to improve people's consciousness and knowledge as well as their practices in relation to energy saving.

Second, as a result of the study on the correlation among consciousness, knowledge and practices (based on households and on complexes) as well as their relation to the pride of the residents, it turned out that each variable has positive correlation with one another.

Third, the suggested path model showed through path analysis that the consciousness of energy saving affects the knowledge of energy saving, the knowledge affects the practices based on households, the practices on households affect the practices based on complexes, and the practices based on complexes affect the pride of the residents of the complex. Therefore, continuous provision of information and offering publicity activities could induce spontaneous energy saving behaviour in the people, and this, in turns, contributes to the formation of sense of community in complex, which also affects the pride of the residents.

The findings verified that the proposed path model was able to well explain relationships between variables that influenced energy saving, and thus this study is expected to serve as management guidelines for energy saving in apartments.

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