On the economic nature of behavioural control in smart real estate

Abstract

The implementation of smart technologies in the built environment presents unprecedented opportunities and challenges for the real estate sector. Among the challenges is building occupants’ behavioural control due to smart buildings’ technological apparatus underpinned by pervasive computing. Since the early days of cybernetics, control stemming from information technology has generated many arguments about freedom, privacy and surveillance. Arguments only focused on technology or ethics tend to foster a Manichean view which obscures our ability to rationally assess calm and transparent technology’s role in controlling space users’ behaviours in smart buildings. The paper applies two classic economic frameworks to decipher the economic nature of behavioural control in smart real estate. In the process, it sheds some light on the complex utilitarian relationship between behavioural control and smart space’s user centricity. It concludes by assessing whether regulators should step in, for instance, through de jure property rights allocation among all parties.