TABLE 5.

—Framework for Research on Barriers and Incentives for the Implementation of Health-Protective Features and Practices in Buildings

Identify and characterize, using social research techniques, the key decisionmakers in the life cycle of the building process and the decision processes that influence the implementation of key health-protective features and practices in buildings. Consider:

• Key trigger points (e.g., transactions) in the building process

• Parties with leverage at trigger points (e.g., lenders, realtors, municipalities)

Evaluate the effectiveness, costs, and benefits of alternate social strategies, including market-based strategies and public policies, either existing or available, that target key barriers and incentives related to health-protective decisions in the building process

Develop estimates, methods, or syntheses necessary to allow more effective decisionmaking related to buildings

• Quantitatively estimate the implementation costs and the health and economic benefits of key features and practices in buildings

• Identify gaps in the health, building, and economic data needed for the above estimates to guide research priorities related to health in indoor work environments; fill these data gaps

• Develop methods allowing decision makers to consider both economic and non-economic (e.g., health, quality of life) effects of choices in building practices

• Assess the prevalence of specific higher risk building features and practices, to help estimate potential costs and benefits of new strategies

• Synthesize the current findings of indoor environmental quality research to enable evidence-based public health recommendations