The Role of Personal Control in Alleviating Negative Perceptions in the Open-Plan Workplace

Abstract

Today's office buildings adopt open-plan settings for collaboration and space efficiency. However, the open plan setting has been intensively criticized for its adverse user experiences, such as noise, privacy loss, and over cooling. The provision of personal control in open-plan work environments is an important means to alleviating the adverse perceptions. This research is to investigate the relationship between the availability of personal controls and the degree of control over the physical environment, as well as their effectiveness in alleviating adverse perceptions in open-plan workplaces. The study combined three systematic occupant survey tools and collected responses from open-plan offices in Shenzhen, China. Specifically, this survey covered 12 personal controls in open-plan workplaces;respondents were asked to report their degree of control over the physical environment and also were required to report if they had adverse perceptions such as sick building syndrome in their offices. The results showed that most of the 12 personal controls supported perceived degree of control over the physical environment but only half of them were negatively associated with adverse perceptions. Non-mechanical controls, such as windows and blinds, were found to be more effective than mechanical controls such as fans and air-conditioning in alleviating adverse perceptions. Conflicts were found between task/desk lights and other personal controls. The research generates important evidence for the interior design of open-plan offices.

Personal Control of the Indoor Environment in Offices: Relations with Building Characteristics, Influence on Occupant Perception and Reported Symptoms Related to the Building—The Officair Project

“…The number of occupants inside the building showed strong effect, especially inside the office, as well as the type of office (private or open space with partitions). Gou et al [49] remarked that the provision of personal control in open-plan work environments is an important means to alleviating adverse perceptions. Noise due to conversations and phone calls negatively affected the controlling perception, which was expected as people cannot control themselves the level of noise.…”

Indoor air quality assessment through measurements and questionnaires

“…Similar findings were also reported in another study (Gou, Zhang, and Shutter 2018) where opening windows were the most frequent behavior of controlling thermal conditions. The limited effect of the available control on the perceived control was pointed out in previous studies (Boerstra et al 2013;Kwon et al 2019), which found no association between available and perceived control.…”

“…(private or open space with partitions). Gou et al (Gou et al 2018) remarked that the provision of personal control in open-plan work environments is an important means to alleviating adverse perceptions. Noise due to conversations and phone calls negatively affected the controlling perception, which was expected as people cannot control themselves the level of noise.…”

Human Factors in Green Building: Building Types and Users’ Needs

“…The paper by Zhonghua Gou, Jian Zhang and Leigh Shutter [8] presents an empirical study about the individual environmental control, especially its benefits on self-reported health status in open-plan work environments where often occupants reported loss of privacy and negative feelings of their health status. The research combined three systematic occupant survey tools and collected responses on 12 selected individual controls.…”