Smart Building Management System (SBMS) for Commercial Buildings—Key Attributes and Usage Intentions from Building Professionals’ Perspective
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The work done by the authors is very appreciated. However, the contribution of the paper is not clear in terms of electrical engineering.
It is something looking like a survey. In my point of view, the authors should clearly indicate how this research is helpful to electrical engineers.
I found few notations on images are italic and normal. Is it possible to add one case study? of smart buildings? If so, add related battery management or electrical study. Then only this paper is good
Else it may be considered for some other journal, related to social surveys
Author Response
1st Comment: The work done by the authors is very appreciated. However, the contribution of the paper is not clear in terms of electrical engineering.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, we rewrote and extended the Abstract as:
“…Exploratory factor analysis shows that intelligent building operations and safety and recovery readiness are two dimensions of SBMS emerged. Specifically, intelligent building operations cover providing intelligent & optimal scheduling of building systems, monitoring and controlling building facilities, having an intelligent and interactive interface, enabling alarm settings and automatic notifications, etc., showing the importance on the application of electrical and control engineering in smart building management. Structural equation model (SEM) results indicate that facilitating conditions affect habit, hedonic motivation, social influence, performance expectancy and effort expectancy, while habit, hedonic motivation, and effort expectancy significantly affect building professionals’ intention to use SBMS in commercial buildings. Practical implications of SBMS attributes for energy management and the ways in which SBMS is encouraged to be used by building professionals are given.”
Additionally, we emphasized the study’s contribution at the end of Introduction as:
“…The study’s findings should contribute to the characterization of SBMS from building operation’s (including electrical engineering’s) perspective and the identification of key factors for driving building system designers, building services engineers, electrical and mechanical engineers, and operators to adopt SBMS in commercial buildings so as to enhance urban sustainability.”
2nd Comment: It is something looking like a survey. In my point of view, the authors should clearly indicate how this research is helpful to electrical engineers.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. Yes, it was a questionnaire survey that solicited opinions from building professionals including electrical engineers about the importance of SBMS attributes and explored what motivated them to have intention to use SBMS. Therefore, we stated in Introduction that:
“…The study’s findings should contribute to the characterization of SBMS from building operation’s (including electrical engineering’s) perspective and the identification of key factors for driving building system designers, building services engineers, electrical and mechanical engineers, and operators to adopt SBMS in commercial buildings so as to enhance urban sustainability.”
Additionally, in Section 5.1, we highlighted that
“ The findings on the three most important attributes (i.e., “monitor and control building facilities”, “enable alarm settings and automatic notifications”, and “provide intelligent and optimal start/stop of building systems”) imply their foremost and fundamental roles in a SBMS in commercial buildings. Therefore, building professionals, particularly electrical engineers, should pay extra attention to ensure the adequacy and recency of these attributes when designing and renewing their SBMS…”
And in Conclusions, we stated that:
“…Sampling 327 building professionals in Hong Kong, the study identified two dimensions of SBMS attributes: intelligent building operations and safety and recovery readiness. Specifically, intelligent building operations include automated & optimal start/stop, monitor, control, schedule building systems with intelligent and interactive interfaces, implying the importance of electrical and control engineering in smart building management. Additionally, the study identified factors influencing building professionals’ intention to use SBMS in commercial buildings based on the refined UTAUT2, among which ... Based on the above findings, the study offered several important practical and managerial implications for building professionals including electrical engineers and their organizations to design and develop more effective SBMS in commercial buildings.”
3rd Comment: I found few notations on images are italic and normal.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. In Figure 2, “R2”, “p”, and “ns” are italic because it is a common practice in statistics to use italic for these notations. We sincerely hope that you find this practice acceptable.
4th Comment: Is it possible to add one case study? of smart buildings? If so, add related battery management or electrical study. Then only this paper is good. Else it may be considered for some other journal, related to social surveys.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, we immediately reviewed cases about energy management in smart buildings. Specifically, we extended Section 5.1 Practical and Managerial Implications as:
“…As open communication protocols center the communication and integration between devices or systems, respondents’ underestimation of the needs for current smart building systems to integrate with other smart systems (e.g., smart power systems, smart disaster warning systems) at city- or country-level in future may plausibly explain the study’s findings, which implies that building professionals including electrical engineers should develop a long-term perspective for future integration and expansion capacity of their SBMS. Lee et al. [52] explored the use of a shared energy storage system for multiple smart buildings equipped with photovoltaic systems using federated reinforcement learning. They showed that the total energy consumption of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning in smart buildings could be reduced by around 28% and electricity cost could be cut by around 19.6% [52]. Additionally, Lourenço et al. [53] demonstrated that with the use of key enabling technologies such as building-integrated photovoltaic, earth tubes, and intelligent automatic system control, it is possible to significant reduce heating energy consumption by 22% in a yearly basis.…”
The following references were added:
[52] Lee, S.; Xie, L.; Choi, D.-H. Privacy-preserving energy management of a shared energy storage system for smart buildings: A federated deep reinforcement learning approach. Sensors 2021, 21, 4898.
[53] Lourenço, J.M.; Aelenei, L.; Facão, J.; Gonçalves, H.; Aelenei, D.; Pina, J.M. The use of key enabling technologies in the nearly zero energy buildings monitoring, control and intelligent management. Energies 2021, 14, 5524.
Dear Reviewer 1: Thanks for providing us very valuable and constructive suggestions.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Abstract:
· The abstract is to limited. It should be more focused on the used analytical tools. Further, it should list the implications/contributions of the study.
Introduction:
· What this abbreviation (TWh) means?
· The authors use associates along with many references. This is un common term for being used in a scientific paper.
· Do not use pronouns in the paper.
· The questions of the study are good. However, illustrating their importance has not been mentioned. This should be considered to support the significance of the paper.
Literature Review:
· The literature review section should be expanding to wide more studies. The scholarly-based knowledge includes several related works. They should be listed foe showing their limitations to support the gap that the paper will address.
· The hypotheses of the study are preferred to be mentioned in the methodology. Further, they should be discussed in more details to describe their relations and impacts.
Method:
· The response rate may be improper. However, it should be supported by related studies. Please check the relevant studies in this respect.
· The instrument (questionnaire) has not been piloted or validated.
· The validity and reliability of the collected data has not been mentioned.
Results:
· The mean, SD, and one-sample tests have been appeared suddenly in the study without any refer to these tools in the method section.
· What is the purpose of using the mid-point i.e. 3 in the study?
· The findings of the EFA are not supported by any scientific basis, including KMO, Bartlett test, cross loading, and the capture of the resulted dimensions.
· The same problem appears in the results of the SEM.
Discussion:
· The discussion lists the methodology or some of its findings. The findings need to be discussed and linked with scholarly-based knowledge.
Conclusion:
· The section is not informative about the importance/need of the study, method used, significance and contributions.
Author Response
1st Comment: Abstract: The abstract is too limited. It should be more focused on the used analytical tools. Further, it should list the implications/contributions of the study.
Our response: Thanks so much for your comment. As suggested by you, we rewrote and expanded the Abstract as:
“…Responses were collected from 327 Hong Kong’s building professionals. Data were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling based on the refined Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Exploratory factor analysis shows that intelligent building operations and safety and recovery readiness are two dimensions of SBMS emerged. Specifically, intelligent building operations cover providing intelligent & optimal start/stop of building systems, monitoring and controlling building facilities, having an intelligent and interactive interface, enabling alarm settings and automatic notifications, providing optimal equipment time scheduling, etc., showing the importance on the application of electrical and control engineering in smart building management. Structural equation model (SEM) results indicate that facilitating conditions affect habit, hedonic motivation, social influence, performance expectancy and effort expectancy, while habit, hedonic motivation, and effort expectancy significantly affect building professionals’ intention to use SBMS in commercial buildings. Practical implications of SBMS attributes for energy management and the ways in which SBMS is encouraged to be used by building professionals are given.”
2nd Comment: Introduction: What this abbreviation (TWh) means?
Our response: Thanks for your comment. We clarify that “…Terawatt-hour (TWh) of energy…” when TWh first appears in the first paragraph of Introduction in the revised manuscript. Terawatt-hour (TWh) is a measure of electrical energy and is equivalent to one trillion watt-hours.
3rd Comment: The authors use associates along with many references. This is uncommon term for being used in a scientific paper.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. In the revised manuscript, we changed “…and associates…” to “…et al. …” which is more commonly adopted.
4th Comment: Do not use pronouns in the paper.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. As suggested by you, we revised the manuscript accordingly i.e. not using pronouns.
5th Comment: The questions of the study are good. However, illustrating their importance has not been mentioned. This should be considered to support the significance of the paper.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. In the revised manuscript, we rewrote the importance and contribution of the study more clearly in the last sentences in Introduction (right after presenting two research questions).
“…The study’s findings should contribute to the characterization of SBMS from building operation’s (including electrical engineering’s) perspective and the identification of key factors for driving building system designers, building services engineers, electrical and mechanical engineers, and operators to adopt SBMS in commercial buildings so as to enhance urban sustainability.
6th Comment: Literature Review: The literature review section should be expanding to wide more studies. The scholarly-based knowledge includes several related works. They should be listed for showing their limitations to support the gap that the paper will address. The hypotheses of the study are preferred to be mentioned in the methodology. Further, they should be discussed in more details to describe their relations and impacts.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comments. First, we should clarify that the second section should be “Literature Review and Hypothesis Development”. As suggested by you, we expanded this section by including more relevant/up-to-date references. For example, we rewrote in Section 2.1 as”
“…Chew et al. [13] evaluated the 5G implementation in Singapore. They suggested that 5G would facilitate smart energy, maintenance, indoor comfort, space utilization, and security management in buildings. Therefore, the Singaporean government actively supports industries and higher education institutions to conduct research on and provide training of integrating 5G into smart building and facility management [13]. Gunatilaka et al. [20] proposed a scoring system to assess smartness level of commercial buildings in Sri Lanka. Based on opinions from 35 building experts, Gunatilaka et al. [20] identified that automation is considered as the most important criterion, followed by communication and data sharing. Furthermore, Eini et al. [16] indicated that SBMS…”
And we also rewrote Section 2.2 as:
“…Schukat and Heise [36] applied the extended UTAUT to investigate what motivates farmers to adopt smart products in Germany. They found that hodenic motivation was the most significant predictor of farmers’ intention to use smart products while price value did not have a significant effect on farmers’ usage intention. In the context of workplace technology use, price value can be excluded because organizations bear the cost of buying or subscribing to the technology. Thus, the study predicts building professionals’ intention to use SBMS with UTAUT2 and hypothesizes:”
Because of these changes, the following references were added:
- Gunatilaka, R.N.; Abdeen, F.N.; Sepasgozar, S.M.E. Developing a scoring system to evaluate the level of smartness in com-mercial buildings: A case of Sri Lanka. Buildings 2021, 11, 644.
- Schukat, S.; Heise, H. Towards an understanding of the behavioral intentions and actual use of smart products among German farmers. Sustainability 2021, 13, 6666.
8th Comment: Method: The response rate may be improper. However, it should be supported by related studies. Please check the relevant studies in this respect.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. As suggested by you, we clarified that:
“…The response rate was similar to the ones reported in other studies in Hong Kong [11,43]. Additionally, the questionnaire had 35 Likert-scale items and Hair et al. [46] suggested that response per item should be 5 or more. Thus, the study’s sample size deemed to be appropriate because its response per item was 9.34 (=327/35).”
9th Comment: The instrument (questionnaire) has not been piloted or validated.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. In the revised manuscript (Section 3.2), we clarified that:
“…It includes three sections. Items of the questionnaire were adapted from the extant literature [16-19,33] to ensure content validity…The draft questionnaire was pilot tested with three engineering faculty members and seven postgraduate students that were not included in the main survey. They commented that the questionnaire was clear and easy to follow. They could complete the questionnaire within 15 minutes.”
10th Comment: The validity and reliability of the collected data has not been mentioned.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. In the revised manuscript (Section 4.1; the third paragraph), we clarified that:
“ EFA was performed with IBM SPSS 26.0. Results showed a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) score of 0.901 and passed Bartlett’s test of sphericity with strong significance (chi-square =1303.7, df=66, p < 0.001), confirming the suitability of the collected data for factor analysis…. The Cronbach’s alpha values of intelligent building operations (0.83) and safety and recovery readiness (0.65) indicated the reliability of the two dimensions to be good and acceptable respectively [46].”
11th Comment: Results: The mean, SD, and one-sample tests have been appeared suddenly in the study without any refer to these tools in the method section.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. In the Method section (subsection 3.3), we explained that:
“ The collected data were analyzed with IBM SPSS 26.0. Respondent characteristics were characterized by descriptive statistics. The importance of SBMS attributes was revealed by the means, standard deviations, and whether the mean scores were statistically significantly higher than the midpoint of 3.0 on the 5-point Likert scale. The core dimensions of SBMS attributes were identified by exploratory factor analysis (EFA)…”
12th Comment: What is the purpose of using the mid-point i.e. 3 in the study?
Our response: Thanks for your comment. The level of importance was revealed by testing items’ mean scores to be significantly different from the midpoint of 3.0 on the 5-point Likert scale. Therefore, we clarified (in Section 3.3) that:
“…The importance of SBMS attributes was revealed by the means, standard deviations, and whether the mean scores were statistically significantly higher than the midpoint of 3.0 on the 5-point Likert scale….”
13th Comment: The findings of the EFA are not supported by any scientific basis, including KMO, Bartlett test, cross loading, and the capture of the resulted dimensions.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. As suggested by you, we rewrote the third paragraph of 4.1 as:
“ EFA was performed with IBM SPSS 26.0. Results showed a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) score of 0.901 and passed Bartlett’s test of sphericity with strong significance (chi-square =1303.7, df=66, p < 0.001), confirming the suitability of the collected data for factor analysis. The number of factors was determined using the eigenvalue-greater-than-one method. Additionally, one item with communalities less than 0.4 and two items with cross-loadings (difference ≤ 0.20) were removed iteratively. These three items were “adopt open communication protocols”, “enable trending and data analytics”, and “enable building occupants to make adjustments.” Nine items remained and the two factors emerged, accounting for 56.6% of the total variance.”
Additionally, factor loadings (including cross loadings), variance explained and Cronbach’s alpha are given in Table 2.
14th Comment: The same problem appears in the results of the SEM.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. In the revised manuscript, we reported that a number of goodness of fit indices were used to assess the appropriateness of the measurement and structural model for the collected data. In Section 4.2, we stated that:
“…The measurement and structural models were assessed using the following two absolute and two incremental fit indices: the normed chi-square (χ2/df), the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), the Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), and the comparative fit index (CFI). The criterion values of χ2/df ≤ 3.0, RMSEA ≤ 0.08, TLI ≥ 0.90, and CFI ≥ 0.90 were adopted [46]….”
We presented the CFA results in Section 4.3 as:
“…The difference in the chi-square value between the seven-factor model and all other models was significant (Delta chi-square = 378.0, Delta df = 6, p < 0.001), suggesting that the seven-factor measurement model fits the collected data much better than all alternative models.”
15th Comment: Discussion: The discussion lists the methodology or some of its findings. The findings need to be discussed and linked with scholarly-based knowledge.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, we elaborated the study’s findings and linked them with some scholarly-based knowledge in Section 5.1. Specifically, we extended in the first paragraph that:
“…As open communication protocols center the communication and integration between devices or systems, respondents’ underestimation of the needs for current smart building systems to integrate with other smart systems (e.g., smart power systems, smart disaster warning systems) at city- or country-level in future may plausibly explain the study’s findings, which implies that building professionals including electrical engineers should develop a long-term perspective for future integration and expansion capacity of their SBMS. Lee et al. [52] explored the use of a shared energy storage system for multiple smart buildings equipped with photovoltaic systems using federated reinforcement learning. They showed that the total energy consumption of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning in smart buildings could be reduced by around 28% and electricity cost could be cut by around 19.6% [52]. Additionally, Lourenço et al. [53] demonstrated that with the use of key enabling technologies such as building-integrated photovoltaic, earth tubes, and intelligent automatic system control, it is possible to significant reduce heating energy consumption by 22% in a yearly basis…”
In the second paragraph, we stated that:
“…User expectation for rapid download, painless learning process and immediate application of an app has already become a norm. Additional effort and system complexity can deter people from adopting a however useful technology [54].”
These “new” references are:
- Lee, S.; Xie, L.; Choi, D.-H. Privacy-preserving energy management of a shared energy storage system for smart buildings: A federated deep reinforcement learning approach. Sensors 2021, 21, 4898.
- Lourenço, J.M.; Aelenei, L.; Facão, J.; Gonçalves, H.; Aelenei, D.; Pina, J.M. The use of key enabling technologies in the nearly zero energy buildings monitoring, control and intelligent management. Energies 2021, 14, 5524.
- Morris, A.; Zuo, J.; Wang, Y.; Wang, J. Readiness for sustainable community: A case study of green star communities. J. Clean. Prod. 2018, 173, 308-317.
16th Conclusion: The section is not informative about the importance/need of the study, method used, significance and contributions.
Our response: Thanks so much for your comment. We rewrote the Conclusions section as:
“…Sampling 327 building professionals in Hong Kong, the study identified two dimensions of SBMS attributes: intelligent building operations and safety and recovery readiness. Specifically, intelligent building operations include intelligent & optimal start/stop, monitor, control, schedule building systems with intelligent and interactive interfaces, implying the importance of electrical and control engineering in smart building management. Additionally, the study identified factors influencing building professionals’ intention to use SBMS in commercial buildings based on the refined UTAUT2, among which facilitating condition affect building professionals’ intention to use the system mostly, through other factors. Habit, hedonic motivation and effort expectancy also affect building professionals’ intention to use the system significantly and directly. Based on the above findings, the study offered several important practical and managerial implications for building professionals including electrical engineers and their organizations to design and develop more effective SBMS in commercial buildings.”
Dear Reviewer 2: Thanks so much for your comments that help improving the manuscript significantly. We sincerely hope that we addressed your concerns appropriately.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This is an interesting paper considering the implementation objectives of SBMSs on the example of commercial buildings, however there is a number of issues that I would suggest authors to consider amending:
1. The papers’ title suggests the reader that the paper focuses on investigating key attributes and implementation intensions of SBMSs on the example of commercial buildings. However, in further parts of the paper, regardless the kind of scientific discussion that the authors wish to follow, neither scientific problem has been formulated nor paper’s aim sufficiently underlined. I would recommend the authors amend the paper in that scope.
2. Considering the fact that the aim and scope of Sustainability Journal is to publish high quality original articles on latest research dealing with various aspects of, amongst others, challenges relating to sustainability, socio-economic, scientific and integrated approaches to sustainable development, I would recommend the authors to extend the literature review on the current state of art (latest publications from international journals) justifying that the paper fits into the Journals’ scope,
3. The third chapter seems to be structuralized in a proper way. The sample of data collection has been presented in a very comprehensible way. I would recommend the authors to provide justification of the adopter methods. What was the reason for applying the methods? Why this solution outperformed other.
4. The mathematical apparatus presented in the paper is quite simple nevertheless, in my opinion, it can be an exhaustive explanation of the mechanism’s effectiveness indicated in next parts of work.
5. There are some examples of, in my opinion, mistranslations, therefore proofread of the manuscript would be highly appreciated and would certainly improve the papers’ comprehensibility for foreign readers
Concluding the above, the paper has a cognitive and practical potential. However, it requires major amendments.
Author Response
General comment: This is an interesting paper considering the implementation objectives of SBMSs on the example of commercial buildings, however there is a number of issues that I would suggest authors to consider amending:
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. We studied your comments thoroughly and revised the manuscript accordingly.
1st Comment: The paper’s title suggests the reader that the paper focuses on investigating key attributes and implementation intentions of SBMSs on the example of commercial buildings. However, in further parts of the paper, regardless the kind of scientific discussion that the authors wish to follow, neither scientific problem has been formulated nor paper’s aim sufficiently underlined. I would recommend the authors amend the paper in that scope.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. As suggested by you, we should emphasize that the study is focused on investigating SBMS key factors (covering different attributes) and building professionals’ intention to use SBMS in commercial buildings. Thus, we highlighted (in the second paragraph of Section 5. Discussion) that:
“ In answering the first research question, an EFA was performed that identified two emerging dimensions of SBMS attributes for commercial buildings, “intelligent building operations” and “safety and recovery readiness”. These dimensions are important because all buildings including commercial buildings can be smart as humans, but …safety and recovery readiness emerges as an important dimension of SBMS, ensuring business continuity for building owners, occupants and users in commercial buildings. This dimension becomes particularly relevant, when disasters such as pandemics hit a community while business activities have to be carried out in commercial buildings [49].”
In the third paragraph of Section 3, we clarified that:
“ In answering the second research question, the refined UTAUT2 was adopted to explore what motivates building professionals to adopt SBMS in commercial buildings. SEM results revealed that…facilitating condition has the greatest effect (0.67 = 0.78x0.53 + 0.66x0.23 + 0.64x0.16) on building professionals’ intention to use the system in commercial buildings.”
In Section 6 Conclusions, we rewrote this section as:
“ Smart buildings are building blocks of urban sustainability and SBMS is one of the emerging technologies making commercial buildings smart. Sampling 327 building professionals in Hong Kong, the study identified two dimensions of SBMS attributes: … Additionally, the study identified factors influencing building professionals’ intention to use SBMS in commercial buildings based on the refined UTAUT2, among which facilitating condition affect building professionals’ intention to use the system mostly, through other factors. …Based on the above findings, the study offered several important practical and managerial implications for building professionals including electrical engineers and their organizations to design and develop more effective SBMS in commercial buildings.
2nd Comment: Considering the fact that the aim and scope of Sustainability Journal is to publish high quality original articles on latest research dealing with various aspects of, amongst others, challenges relating to sustainability, socio-economic, scientific and integrated approaches to sustainable development, I would recommend the authors to extend the literature review on the current state of art (latest publications from international journals) justifying that the paper fits into the Journals’ scope.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, we performed another round of literature review and added some latest research findings in Section 2 Literature Review and Hypothesis Development such as (in Section 2.1):
“…Chew et al. [13] evaluated the 5G implementation in Singapore. They suggested that 5G would facilitate smart energy, maintenance, indoor comfort, space utilization, and security management in buildings. Therefore, the Singaporean government actively supports industries and higher education institutions to conduct research on and provide training of integrating 5G into smart building and facility management [13]. Gunatilaka et al. [20] proposed a scoring system to assess smartness level of commercial buildings in Sri Lanka. Based on opinions from 35 building experts, Gunatilaka et al. [20] identified that automation is considered as the most important criterion, followed by communication and data sharing. Furthermore, Eini et al. [16] indicated that SBMS…”
And we also rewrote Section 2.2 as:
“…Schukat and Heise [36] applied the extended UTAUT to investigate what motivates farmers to adopt smart products in Germany. They found that hodenic motivation was the most significant predictor of farmers’ intention to use smart products while price value did not have a significant effect on farmers’ usage intention. In the context of workplace technology use, price value can be excluded because organizations bear the cost of buying or subscribing to the technology. Thus, the study predicts building professionals’ intention to use SBMS with UTAUT2 and hypothesizes:”
Because of these changes, the following references were added:
- Gunatilaka, R.N.; Abdeen, F.N.; Sepasgozar, S.M.E. Developing a scoring system to evaluate the level of smartness in com-mercial buildings: A case of Sri Lanka. Buildings 2021, 11, 644.
- Schukat, S.; Heise, H. Towards an understanding of the behavioral intentions and actual use of smart products among German farmers. Sustainability 2021, 13, 6666.
Additionally, some new references were cited in Section 5.1 Practical and Managerial Implications:
“…As open communication protocols center the communication and integration between devices or systems, respondents’ underestimation of the needs for current smart building systems to integrate with other smart systems (e.g., smart power systems, smart disaster warning systems) at city- or country-level in future may plausibly explain the study’s findings, which implies that building professionals including electrical engineers should develop a long-term perspective for future integration and expansion capacity of their SBMS. Lee et al. [52] explored the use of a shared energy storage system for multiple smart buildings equipped with photovoltaic systems using federated reinforcement learning. They showed that the total energy consumption of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning in smart buildings could be reduced by around 28% and electricity cost could be cut by around 19.6% [52]. Additionally, Lourenço et al. [53] demonstrated that with the use of key enabling technologies such as building-integrated photovoltaic, earth tubes, and intelligent automatic system control, it is possible to significant reduce heating energy consumption by 22% in a yearly basis.…”
The following references were added:
[52] Lee, S.; Xie, L.; Choi, D.-H. Privacy-preserving energy management of a shared energy storage system for smart buildings: A federated deep reinforcement learning approach. Sensors 2021, 21, 4898.
[53] Lourenço, J.M.; Aelenei, L.; Facão, J.; Gonçalves, H.; Aelenei, D.; Pina, J.M. The use of key enabling technologies in the nearly zero energy buildings monitoring, control and intelligent management. Energies 2021, 14, 5524.
3rd Comment: The third chapter seems to be structuralized in a proper way. The sample of data collection has been presented in a very comprehensible way. I would recommend the authors to provide justification of the adopter methods. What was the reason for applying the methods? Why this solution outperformed other.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. In Section 3.2, we updated this section and we highlighted that we adapted items from the extant literature to ensure content validity. Additionally, a pilot test was carried out to ensure the validity of the instrument.
“ A 35-item self-administered questionnaire was developed. It includes three sections. Items of the questionnaire were adapted from the extant literature [16-19,33] to ensure content validity. The first section comprises 12 items. The items cover important attributes of smart BMS for commercial buildings…The draft questionnaire was pilot tested with three engineering faculty members and seven postgraduate students that were not included in the main survey. They commented that the questionnaire was clear and easy to follow. They could complete the questionnaire within 15 minutes.”
4th Comment: The mathematical apparatus presented in the paper is quite simple nevertheless, in my opinion, it can be an exhaustive explanation of the mechanism’s effectiveness indicated in next parts of work.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. You are right. The instrument we used is quite sample. Nevertheless, we identified the level of importance of different SBMS attribures based on building professionals’ mean scores. Additionally, we used exploratory factor analysis to reveal underlying factors of SBMS. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to explore what motivates building professionals’ to have intention to use SBMS in commercial buildings. Thus, we rewrote Section 3.3 Data Analysis Procedure as:
“ The collected data were analyzed with IBM SPSS 26.0. Respondent characteristics were characterized by descriptive statistics. The importance of SBMS attributes was revealed by the means, standard deviations, and whether the mean scores were statistically significantly higher than the midpoint of 3.0 on the 5-point Likert scale. The core dimensions of SBMS attributes were identified by exploratory factor analysis (EFA). EFA is useful to reveal underlying dimensions of the topic of interest [46] i.e. SBMS in the present study. To identify the direct and indirect effects of facilitating condition on building professional’s intention to use SBMS, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) using IBM SPSS Amos 26.0 with maximum likelihood estimation were used. CFA ascertained the factor structure of the refined UTAUT2 and the validity of the selected constructs shown in Figure 1. SEM tested the effects of facilitating condition and other constructs on building professionals’ intention to use SBMS.”
5th Comment: There are some examples of, in my opinion, mistranslations, therefore proofread of the manuscript would be highly appreciated and would certainly improve the papers’ comprehensibility for foreign readers.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, the revised manuscript has been carefully proofread by professionals.
6th Comment: Concluding the above, the paper has a cognitive and practical potential. However, it requires major amendments.
Our response: Thanks for your comment. We sincerely hope that we have addressed your concerns appropriately in the revised manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The revised version is upto the mark. It may be accepted
Author Response
Thanks very much for your review and suggestion.
Reviewer 2 Report
Abstract:
· The abstract has been improved. However, it has some long sentences and abbreviations, such as etc., &
Introduction:
· The introduction has been improved. The added lines from 74 to 79 needs to be rewritten and the contribution of the questions of the study have to be more improved to illustrate their importance towards the practitioners and academics.
Hypotheses:
· As the paper presents, it has 12 hypotheses. Some has been mentioned in section 2.2. Yet, the other in sections 2.3 and 2.4. The authors have to find another way to list and present their hypotheses based on the literature.
Method:
· Please provide summary about the methodology before starting discussing its contents.
Author Response
1st Comment: Abstract - The abstract has been improved. However, it has some long sentences and abbreviations, such as etc., &
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, some long sentences and the abbreviations, such as etc., &, have been rewritten as:
“…Specifically, intelligent building operations include intelligent and optimal scheduling of building systems, monitor and control of building facilities, having intelligent and interactive interface, and enabling alarm settings and automatic notifications, showing the importance on the application of electrical engineering in smart building management. Structural equation model (SEM) results indicate that facilitating conditions affect habit, hedonic motivation, social influence, performance expectancy and effort expectancy. Additionally, habit, hedonic motivation and effort expectancy significantly affect building professionals’ intention to use SBMS. Practical implications of SBMS attributes for energy management and the ways in which SBMS is encouraged to be used by building professionals are given.”
2nd Comment: Introduction - The introduction has been improved. The added lines from 74 to 79 needs to be rewritten and the contribution of the questions of the study have to be more improved to illustrate their importance towards the practitioners and academics.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. The sentences were rewritten as:
“…The study’s findings should contribute to the characterization of SBMS from building operation’s (including electrical engineering’s) perspective. Additionally, the identification of key factors and mechanism for driving building professionals to adopt SBMS should shed light on how to promote building professionals including electrical engineers to use SBMS in commercial buildings. The study also tests the applicability of a refined model of the Unified Theory of Acceptance of Use of Technology in the smart building context.”
3rd Comment: Hypotheses - As the paper presents, it has 12 hypotheses. Some has been mentioned in section 2.2. Yet, the other in sections 2.3 and 2.4. The authors have to find another way to list and present their hypotheses based on the literature.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. You are correct. All hypotheses presented in sections 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 (in the old manuscript) belongs to the same model. Therefore, we rewrote Section 2.2 as “A Refined Model of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology” and it covers 2.2.1 “The Acceptance and Use of Technology” (H1-H6), 2.2.2 “Effort Expectancy and Performance Expectancy” (H7), and 2.2.3 “Role of Facilitating Condition” (H8-H12).
4th Comment: Method - Please provide summary about the methodology before starting discussing its contents.
Our response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, we provide a summary in the beginning of Section 3 Method as:
“ The study was a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. It aimed at soliciting responses from building professionals about the importance of SMBS features and perceptions of organizational and personal factors that might influence their intention to use SMBS in commercial buildings. Factor analyses and structural equation modeling were conducted. In what follows, sample and data collection, the instrument used, and data analysis procedure are presented.”
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The quality of the paper has been improved. The authors amended the paper according to the suggestions. I think that the readers will appreciate the paper in the present form. I recommend the paper for publication in that form and would like to congratulate the authors for interesting original paper preparation.
Author Response
Thanks so much for your comment and recommendation.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
