How Work From Home Has Affected the Occupant's Well-Being in the Residential Built Environment: An International Survey Amid the Covid-19 Pandemic
- 26 October 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by ASME International in ASME Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities
- Vol. 2 (4), 1-41
- https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4052640
Abstract
This paper presents the results from an international survey that investigated the impacts of the built environment on occupant well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic when most professionals were forced to work from home (WFH). The survey was comprised of 81 questions focusing on the respondent's profiles, residences, home indoor environmental quality, health, and home working experiences. A total of 1,460 responses were collected from 35 countries, and 1,137 of them were considered complete for the analysis. The results suggest that home spatial layout has a significant impact on occupant well-being during WFH since home-life distractions and noises due to the lack of a personal workspace are likely to prevent productive work. Lack of scenic views, inadequate daylighting, and poor acoustics were also reported to be detrimental to occupant productivity and the general WFH experience. It is also revealed from this survey that temperature, relative humidity, and indoor air quality generally have higher satisfaction ratios compared with the indoor lighting and acoustic conditions, and the home layout. Hence, home design for lighting, acoustics, and layout should also receive greater attention in the futureKeywords
Funding Information
- Directorate for Engineering (1931226, 1931238, 1931254, 2009754)
This publication has 48 references indexed in Scilit:
- Relationship between quality of building maintenance management services for indoor environmental quality and occupant satisfactionJournal of Affective Disorders, 2011
- Well-Being index of super tall residential buildings in KoreaJournal of Affective Disorders, 2011
- An overview analysis of the time people spend outdoorsBritish Journal of Dermatology, 2011
- The correlation coefficient: Its values range between +1/−1, or do they?Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, 2009
- Noise and well-being in urban residential environments: The potential role of perceived availability to nearby green areasLandscape and Urban Planning, 2007
- Thermal comfort and workplace occupant satisfaction—Results of field studies in German low energy office buildingsEnergy and Buildings, 2007
- Some Quantitative Relations between Indoor Environmental Quality and Work Performance or HealthHVAC&R Research, 2006
- Application of artificial neural network to predict the optimal start time for heating system in buildingEnergy Conversion and Management, 2003
- It's about time: A comparison of Canadian and American time–activity patternsJournal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 2002
- The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work TimeAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1999