A Review of the Factors Influencing Adoption and Abandonment of Indoor Air Quality Improvement Strategies

Over 90% of people's time is spent indoors, where contaminant concentrations can be unhealthy. Continued exposure to poor indoor air quality (IAQ) can cause headaches and dizziness, and in the long term, lead to severe respiratory diseases. However, people cannot precisely perceive IAQ contamination levels, which makes it difficult to discern when safe thresholds are exceeded. IAQ monitoring technologies help communicate in situ IAQ conditions, and IAQ management technologies can help improve IAQ. Despite the potential of these technologies to inform and enhance IAQ, their continued use is hindered by several barriers, including cost, privacy concerns, and portability issues. Aside from these barriers, technology adoption is influenced by several factors, including user behavior, contextual or organizational factors, and technology-specific factors. There is a lack of research that synthesizes how these factors studied in the existing literature can inform researchers in overcoming these barriers and enhancing IAQ technology adoption. Thus, this systematic literature review examines the IAQ literature from 2015 to 2025 to identify behavioral, contextual, and technological factors that hinder the adoption of IAQ monitoring and management technologies. The review used VOSviewer to analyze research keywords over time, along with the use of key research terms in abstracts and titles, to support the textual summary of the adoption of IAQ monitoring and management technology. The identified literature points future research in directions focusing on: (1) scalable IAQ evaluation methods and real time reporting, (2) multiple-metric performance evaluation of IAQ, (3) user-centered communication to build trust and drive IAQ improving action, (4) incorporating recurring cost into longitudinal adoption and maintenance of IAQ devices, and (5) design of organizational-level frameworks that specify roles, responsibilities, financing, and governance across the full lifecycle of IAQ monitoring and management. Advancing along these directions will help the field transition from incremental device management toward sustained IAQ management practices, ensuring that innovation is not only technically impressive but also usable, equitable, and effective in the long term.