Field investigation on the thermal environment and thermal comfort in shopping malls in the cold zone of China

Reducing the energy consumption of large shopping malls is beneficial to achieving China's dual carbon goals. This study aims to explore the thermal comfort demands of occupants and provide guidance for the energy-efficient design of the indoor thermal environment in shopping malls. We selected nine typical large shopping malls in the cold area of China as the research object and carried out a year-long field study, which involved the survey of physical environment parameters and subjective questionnaires. 3175 valid data sets were obtained in all seasons. The study results found that the indoor thermal environment suffers from overheating in winter and overcooling in summer. The neutral Top is 21.3 °C, 25.4 °C, 19.0 °C, and 17.4 °C in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, respectively. The upper limit of the 80% temperature acceptability range in summer was 27.5 °C. The 80% acceptability range in winter (16.4–23.2 °C) is wider than GB 50736 standard, which can be appropriately relaxed for the HVAC temperature setting in the mall. Apparent vertical thermal stratification exists in the malls and significantly affects the occupants' thermal comfort. Compared to the PMV model, the adaptive model was more applicable for thermal environment evaluation of shopping malls in transition season and summer. This study proposes indoor temperature settings under the premise of meeting human thermal comfort, which provides references for the design and operation of shopping malls in cold-climate zones.