Date of Award

8-2015

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Geography

First Advisor

Dr. Gregory Veeck

Second Advisor

Dr. Kathleen Baker

Third Advisor

Dr. Lisa Dechano-Cook

Keywords

LEED, Great Lakes, climate, housing, geospatial

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

This research examines multiple factors that were previously used to describe where LEED-certified homes locations from 2008 to 2015 in the Great Lakes states. This study includes an analysis of 1,040 buildings located in 144 cities across six Great Lakes states. Along with the data in the LEED homes dataset, LEED homes locations are compared using three climate factors: heating degree days, cooling degree days, and average annual temperature. Socioenvironmental factors hypothesized to influence the location of LEED-verified buildings included the city population, the city’s total area, water area, percent water area, land area, population density, and housing density. Two datasets incorporated these variables to study their influence on LEED home density in the Great Lakes region using univariate and multivariate statistical methods.

The climate factors in this study are not statistically significant variables, and will not describe the diffusion of LEED-certified homes. Socio-environmental factors had a slight but significant relationship to LEED home locations. The OLS multivariate regression model, using statistically significant variables, found that 13.4% of differences in LEED home density in 144 cities can be explained by the above variables. Multivariate regression residuals were mapped and show four significant clusters in the Great Lakes region, showing that there are additional factors that should be investigated to help describe LEED home diffusion.

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