Kim, Jungsoo (2014) Impact of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors on occupant evaluation of workspaces. PhD thesis, University of Sydney, Australia.
Abstract
This study aims to better understand the relationship between perceived building performance on specific Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) factors and occupants' overall evaluation of their workspace environment. A three-factor satisfaction model, developed originally in the context of marketing, has been adapted to and found suitable for the IEQ domain. Analyses were conducted on the Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) database from Center for Built Environment (CBE) at the University of California, Berkeley to estimate the relative significance of individual IEQ factors on occupants' overall workspace evaluation, depending on whether or not the occupants were satisfied with the IEQ factor in question. The empirical analysis suggested that a certain amount of input (i.e. increments or decrements of occupant satisfaction with individual IEQ factor) doesn't necessarily lead to a commensurate desirable output (i.e. overall workspace satisfaction). According to each IEQ factor's functional relationship with overall satisfaction, fifteen IEQ factors addressed in the CBE questionnaire were classified into three groups: (1) Basic Factors – having predominantly negative effects, (2) Bonus Factors – having predominantly positive effects, and (3) Proportional Factors – having both positive and negative effects with similar magnitudes. In general the IEQ factors tended to show negative asymmetry, becoming more critical when the building was deemed to be underperforming on them. This study also explored the influence of gender, building ventilation system type, and office layout configuration, on occupant IEQ satisfaction. (1) Female gender was significantly associated with increased dissatisfaction with all of the IEQ factors analysed in this thesis, but particularly with temperature, indoor air quality and workspace cleanliness. (2) Occupants of buildings with different ventilation systems responded in different ways to various IEQ dimensions. In naturally-ventilated buildings, good thermal conditions were associated with significantly enhanced workspace satisfaction and barely discernible adverse impacts. In air-conditioned buildings, on the other hand, thermal conditions were more directly associated with overall dissatisfaction with workspace environment. Occupants provided with higher degrees of adaptive opportunities were more satisfied with the IEQ of their workplaces. (3) Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts iii in most aspects of IEQ, but particularly in acoustics, privacy and proxemics issues. Noise distraction and lack of privacy were identified as the major sources of workplace dissatisfaction in open-plan offices. The predicted decrements in overall workspace satisfaction due to privacy and acoustic issues in open-plan layouts were bigger than the predicted increment due to ease of communication between colleagues. Further analyses performed on an Australian POE database collected through Building Occupant Survey System Australia (BOSSA) project highlighted the benefits of external view through a window, positively affecting occupant satisfaction with workplace IEQ.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | indoor environmental quality; post occupancy evaluation; office building; occupant satisfaction; thermal comfort; adaptive opportunity |
| Index terms: | office building, Australia, database, workspace, post-occupancy evaluation, becoming, satisfaction, dimension, estimate, indoor environmental quality, office layout, marketing, occupant satisfaction, built environment, thermal comfort, ventilation, building performance, occupant survey, privacy, questionnaire, configuration, indoor air quality, window |
| Subjects: | construction type, specialized design, professional ethics, philosophical process, quality assurance, architectural elements, Geography, evaluation methods, health monitoring assessment and metrics, project delivery, financial and cost management, data collection methods, user-centered design, air quality, business, data management, infrastructure and transport systems, environmental engineering, systems engineering, environmental health, management |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Stakeholder Management, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Design Practice, Digital Applications, Urban Studies, Sustainability, Geographical Context, Project Management, Engineering Principles, Health and Safety, Quality Management, Legal Issues |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here