Abstract
Personal control is one of the influential factors for user satisfaction and environmental comfort due to its physical and psychological impacts. This paper aims to identify the relationship between the degree of personal control over indoor environmental conditions and user satisfaction with thermal and visual comfort. Trying to answer the question, field studies on user control were conducted in 5 office buildings in the Netherlands. Occupants assessed their perceived satisfaction online by means of a questionnaire. Based on the dataset, Pearson's Chi-Square test was conducted to investigate the relationship. The results showed that a higher controllability leads to more satisfaction in terms of thermal and visual comfort. The research also revealed the psychological impact of personal control on user satisfaction by showing differences in perceived satisfaction according to “no control” and “do not have” between thermal and visual comfort. Personal control of ventilation was the most significant factor influencing the satisfaction with thermal comfort. These findings provide support to workplace management and to the design of personal environmental control systems.
Highlights
User satisfaction, in terms of indoor comfort, is a subjective topic
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the actual use of person control over the environmental condition systems in offices; to understand the dependency of a user's environmental satisfaction regarding the degree of personal control; and to contribute to designing better user control that enhances user satisfaction at work
In order to explore the impact of each environmental factor, satisfaction variables were integrated into a thermal comfort variable and a visual comfort variable
Summary
In terms of indoor comfort, is a subjective topic. User control is an important issue for an individual's thermal comfort. There are many studies dealing with automated control of building systems and control strategies for shading devices [2,3,4] and lighting with occupancy sensors [5], in order to manage the energy consumption in an efficient way. Systems fully automated for energy efficiency may incur a risk of serious occupant dissatisfaction. Blaso, and Pellegrino [5] stated that automatic control has potential energy savings, user control is important to correct the defects of the automatic system
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