The effects of social density, spatial density, noise, and office views on perceived personal space in the virtual workplace

Abstract

Here we sought to understand how perceived personal space is influenced by a number of variables that could influence Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ); specifically, we tested how different levels of social density, spatial density, noise presence, and type of view impact the appreciation of personal space in a shared office environment. We employed virtual reality (VR) to simulate shared and single occupancy offices and devised a novel measure of personal space estimation. We also used a traditional personal space satisfaction score. Participants experienced greater perceived personal space when (1) in a sparsely populated rather than a dense office, (2) in a private office rather than an open plan office, and (3) having any view outside of the office. We did not find an effect of the presence of noise or increased social density (with spatial density held constant) on the perception of personal space.

Differences in office-based personal space perception between British and Korean populations

“…To maintain brevity, and avoid the publication of same data multiple times, the results reported in this article are limited to the Korean participant’s only (see Table 1 for mean estimated personal space, and Table 2 for mean questionnaire responses). We also report a cross-paper analysis between the data presented here and the results of experiment two in Jicol et al (2023) . For the United Kingdom sample’s data, refer to the accompanying publication of Jicol et al (2023) .…”

“…All participants were required to read through an information sheet that described the purpose, details of the task, and then provide written informed consent prior to commencing the experiment. Sample size was chosen in line with guidelines for VR research ( Grantcharov et al, 2004 ) and a power calculation based on Experiment 1 in Jicol et al (2023) .…”

“… A demonstration of increasing social density with a constant spatial density (the personal space around each person remains the same), for a single occupancy, and an 8-, 16-, and 32-person shared office. Reproduced with permission from Jicol et al (2023) . …”

“…(A) = no view office; (B) = internal view office; (C) = outdoor view office. Reproduced with permission from Jicol et al (2023) .…”

“…The procedure follows that of Jicol et al (2023) which will be described here in brief. All participants provided informed consent, followed by the pre-experiment questionnaire.…”