A comparative study of gender differences in healthy office building strategies

Abstract

Background: The health of office workers has become a major concern under the pressure of increasingly fierce job competition. As countries have gradually promoted healthy buildings, there is an urgent need to create and construct healthy office environments. Although the WELL Building Standard proposed management and design strategies based on the principles of health and medicine, it does not consider group characteristics or gender differences.

Purpose: This study aims to apply the theory of planned behavior to healthy building design and supplement the important role of gender and group characteristics in behavioral guidance based on architectural strategies and user behaviors to improve the relevant building evaluation system.

Methods: This study adopted a questionnaire survey and structural equation model. Four WELL-certified healthy office buildings in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, were selected for the survey. Based on the theory of planned behavior, structural equation models for men and women were established, compared, and analyzed. The factors affecting the health behaviors of the two groups and the actual effectiveness of various building optimization strategies were discussed, and an optimization direction for gender differences was proposed.

Results: The findings indicated differences between male and female staff in their individual characteristics and implementation of health behaviors. Management strategies, subjective design strategies in assistance and guidance, and objective design strategies in spatial planning can promote the health behaviors of the two groups. However, the design strategies of result feedback and detail optimization only appeared to have a significant positive effect on female staff, whereas the intelligent automation design strategies only had an obvious intervention effect on men's health behaviors.

Significance: This study found that the theory of planned behavior in the field of social psychology could be applied to relevant research on architectural design and emphasized the influence of gender. It can not only provide the optimization direction for the evaluation standards of relevant healthy buildings but also promote the implementation of health behaviors in office groups and provide new ideas for promoting the development of healthy buildings.

Keywords: evaluation system; gender differences; healthy office buildings; objective execution difficulty; subjective action; theory of planned behavior.