A Longitudinal Case Study on the Role of Education in the Underlying Determinants of Residential Sustainable Energy-Saving Behavior, Examining Psychological Barriers, in Sétif, Algeria

Promoting sustainability in the building sector requires greater attention to household energy-saving behavior alongside technical efficiency measures. This exploratory longitudinal study investigates how an educational intervention influences residents’ environmental awareness, knowledge, energy-saving behaviors, and motivation, while examining psychological barriers to behavioral change—specifically procrastination and comfort prioritization. The study was conducted in two residential building types in Sétif, Algeria (high-end and mid-range housing), using a pre–post questionnaire design to assess changes before and after the intervention. Findings indicate measurable improvements across all examined determinants: mean awareness scores increased from 2.10 to 3.75, knowledge from 1.75 to 2.66, reported energy-saving behavior from 2.53 to 3.36, and motivation from 2.27 to 3.83 following the educational phase. Nonlinear regression analysis further suggests that procrastination and comfort prioritization explain 40.8% of the variance in reported energy-saving behavior, underscoring the importance of psychological determinants in residential energy use. Overall, the results point to the potential of educational and behavioral strategies to complement technical measures in promoting household energy saving. Given the exploratory and context-specific design, this study offers initial empirical insights and establishes a foundation for future research involving larger and more representative samples, a broader range of building types, and diverse sociocultural settings.