Individual Differences in Office Comfort: What Affects Comfort Varies by Person

Abstract

In the present research, we investigated the factors that affect comfort in the office and individual differences therein. Aside from meta-analysis research, factors that affect comfort were investigated individually (such as thermal factors, lighting, air pollutants, and so on), and the relative importance or relationship between them has not been investigated directly. We conducted a two-week survey in a corporate office and gathered 2075 responses from occupants. For data collection, we applied a method that combined experience sampling method with the evaluation grid method, which allowed us to gather a lot of data in daily situations. The results revealed that subjective comfort was evoked by various factors such as thermal factors, light, sound, inside, and so on. Subjective comfort did not show a significant correlation with the objective thermal comfort index (predicted mean vote; PMV), and subjective productivity was correlated with subjective comfort but not with objective comfort. These results indicate the importance of subjective factors in addition to objective factors. In addition, the 147 occupants were divided into three clusters (inside cluster, balanced cluster, and thermal cluster), each of which had different characteristics indicating the individual differences in components of comfort. In the present research, we succeeded in the reproduction of our previous research, which was conducted in a different season, emphasizing the validity of the present results.