Gauging the impact of personal lifestyle, indoor environmental quality and work-related factors on occupant productivity when working from home

Abstract

Purpose

Personal lifestyle, work environments and work-related factors can significantly affect occupant productivity. Although many studies examine the affecting factors of occupant productivity in offices, explorations for the home-based work environment, which is designed mainly for living purposes, are still scarce. Moreover, current pandemic has made work from home a new normal for workers around the world. Therefore, it is important to identify key causal factors of occupant productivity when working from home.

Design/methodology/approach

This study employed descriptive analysis and regression analysis method to explore the relationship among personal lifestyle, indoor environmental quality and work-related factors toward occupant productivity. A questionnaire including a comprehensive list of key measures was designed and 189 valid responses were collected from more than 13,000 participants.

Findings

Results show that a healthy lifestyle, the perceived satisfaction of visual and acoustic environment, communication, interest in work, workload, flexible schedule and privacy positively affect occupant productivity when working from home, while coffee consumption, outside views and windows have negative effect.

Originality/value

Opportunities to enhance occupants' home-based work productivity include developing a healthy lifestyle by taking advantage of flexible schedule, equipping a working room at home with advanced and intelligent environment control systems, and improving communication, workload and schedule by changing the policy of companies.

Citation

Guo, X., Wu, H., Chen, Y., Chang, Y. and Ao, Y. (2023), "Gauging the impact of personal lifestyle, indoor environmental quality and work-related factors on occupant productivity when working from home", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 30 No. 8, pp. 3713-3730. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-10-2021-0941