br Introduction Chinese urbanization has undergone more than

Introduction Chinese urbanization has undergone more than three decades of “reform and opening” (Gu et al., 2012). The country׳s economic development has stimulated significant growth in rural areas, the physical size, population, and new residential building construction of which have increase. China׳s national development strategy of “green building” was announced in the special planning outline of the country׳s 12th Five-Year Plan (Wu and Xu, 2013; Ye et al., 2013). This green building strategy has two main development targets in new building construction: to produce a comfortable building environment and to encourage the efficient use of energy through energy conservation techniques. The most important design strategy of a residential building has previously focused on energy efficiency, and the building criterion of JGJ134-2010 (MHURD-PRC, 2010) usually provided the design standard for indoor environmental design or the guideline for building operation. The key guidelines contained in the document “The Technical Essential for Construction of Healthy Housing” published in 2004 (CNERCHS-PRC, 2004) clearly defined the norm of comfort in indoor environmental designs. However, such a green building strategy soon moved beyond economic efficiency and also considered the comfort and well-being of local occupants. Knowledge of user perception and satisfaction in green buildings remains lacking (Gou et al., 2013). Gou presented a huge difference in satisfaction and comfort in among different green buildings. They further recommended the need to balance the personal comfort of occupants and sustainable levels of energy use. A green building is defined as one that is energy- and resource-efficient to sustain the life sphk of its operations while being conducive to the health and comfort of its occupants. Green buildings may be considered as a small-scale “ecological footprint” with the following characteristics or effects: minimal energy use; minimal requirement for water, material, and energy resources throughout its life cycle; conducive to occupant health productivity; and minimal waste, pollution, or environmental degradation (Gabay et al., 2014). In other words, a green building is characterized by a sustainable design that meets the needs of present users without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Roufechaei et al., 2014). The green building revolution has proven to be a significant and irreversible event in the building sector and a change that has improved building environments in urban areas and global environments (USEPA, 2009;USGBC, 2009). The intensive study on 40 green projects and hundreds of existing reviews developed by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Capital E Group (Kats et al., 2003) show that the cost of occupant comfort, productivity, and health are larger than those spent on construction and operation. The U.S. Green Building Council launched a survey to present a sustainable building design and identify how such a design can positively affect human living; this survey eventually became a significant study on green buildings (Heerwagen, 2000; Reeder, 2010; Sighn et al., 2010). Two large-scale studies were also launched by the Center for Built Environment of the University of California, Berkeley in North America (Abbazadeh et al., 2006; Brager and Baker, 2008; Leaman and Bordass, 2007) and by Building Uses Studies Ltd. in the UK (Leaman and Bordass, 2007). These two studies highlighted the limitations of green building performance and occupant comfort and satisfaction (Fu 2002a, 2002b). Moreover, the indoor environments of “green buildings” became an extension of research on sustainable design, which focused only on natural impact while disregarding occupancy issues. Only a few relevant parametric studies have focused on the indoor thermal environment of green residential buildings in China with consideration of their thermal comfort and energy efficiency. Regional occupant thermal cognition is becoming increasingly important in building designs that follow the “people first” concept.