Abstract
Globally, a primary concern is whether green office buildings perform as promised in terms of providing better indoor environment quality (IEQ) for employees, which may affect their satisfaction and work performance. In the Middle East, although there has been renewed interest in green building design, post occupancy evaluation of performance has never been conducted to-date, and evidence of actual occupant perception in green and non-green buildings is still ambiguous. Hence, we present the first study on IEQ performance in the Middle East. We show that Jordan can be taken as a representative example and systematically compare five “green” office buildings (representing 71% of all green-certified office buildings) against eight comparable conventional office buildings (CBs). Detailed bi-lingual survey data on perceived IEQ (n = 502) and work performance are accompanied by high-resolution continuous physical measurements of air temperature + relative humidity (n = 83) and CO2 concentrations (n = 21) with periodic measurements of mean radiant temperature and air speed, covering two typical summers and one typical winter. Results show both buildings types comply with design standards for indoor CO2 levels, while thermal comfort in green buildings is better than in CBs. However, CBs have a higher overall occupant satisfaction of IEQ. Work performance measured as absolute and relative absenteeism was slightly higher in CBs, with no significant differences in relative and absolute presenteeism between the two buildings types. These findings challenge the notion that green buildings improve occupant satisfaction and work performance over CBs and suggest the need for a better understanding of the performance-satisfaction gap.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ali AS, Chua SJL, Lim Melissa EL (2015). The effect of physical environment comfort on employees’ performance in office buildings. Structural Survey, 33: 294–308.
Altomonte S, Schiavon S (2013). Occupant satisfaction in LEED and non-LEED certified buildings. Building and Environment, 68: 66–76.
ANSI/ASHRAE 55 (2017). Standard 55—Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy. Atlanta: American Society for Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers.
ANSI/ASHRAE 62.1 (2019). Standard 62.1—Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality. Atlanta: American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.
Armitage L, Murugan A, Kato H (2011). Green offices in Australia: A user perception survey. Journal of Corporate Real Estate, 13: 169–180.
ASTM D6245–18 (2018). Standard Guide for Using Indoor Carbon Dioxide Concentrations to Evaluate Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation. West Conshohocken, USA: ASTM International.
BREEAM (2019). Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method. Available at https://www.breeam.com/. Accessed 30 Nov 2019.
Brown Z, Cole RJ (2009). Influence of occupants’ knowledge on comfort expectations and behaviour. Building Research & Information, 37: 227–245.
Brown Z, Cole RJ, Robinson J, Dowlatabadi H (2010). Evaluating user experience in green buildings in relation to workplace culture and context. Facilities, 28: 225–238.
BUS (2019). Building Use Studies. Usable Buildings. Available at https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/. Accessed 1 Nov 2019.
CBE (2019). Center for the Built Environment. Available at https://cbe.berkeley.edu/resources/occupant-survey/. Accessed 3 Nov 2019.
CDC (2020). The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Workplace Safety & Health Topics. Available at https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/indoorenv/buildingventilation.html. Accessed 16 Jun 2020.
CEN ISO/TR 52000-2 (2017). Energy Performance of Buildings-Overarching EPB Assessment. British Standards Institution.
Christiansen B, Chandan HC (2017). Handbook of Research on Human Factors in Contemporary Workforce Development. Hershey, PA, USA: IGI Global.
Chua SJL, Ali AS, Lim MEL (2016). Physical environment comfort impacts on office employee’s performance. MATEC Web of Conferences, 66: 00124.
CIBSE (2019). TM22: Energy Assessment and Reporting Methodology. Available at https://www.cibse.org. Accessed 25 Oct 2019.
Cohen J (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edn. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Collinge WO, Landis AE, Jones AK, Schaefer LA, Bilec MM (2014). Productivity metrics in dynamic LCA for whole buildings: Using a post-occupancy evaluation of energy and indoor environmental quality tradeoffs. Building and Environment, 82: 339–348.
Cureton EE (1958). The definition and estimation of test reliability. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 18: 715–738.
d’Ambrosio Alfano FR, Olesen BW, Palella BI, Pepe D, Riccio G (2020). Fifty years of PMV model: Reliability, implementation and design of software for its calculation. Atmosphere, 11: 49.
Davies M, Oreszczyn T (2012). The unintended consequences of decarbonising the built environment: A UK case study. Energy and Buildings, 46: 80–85.
Delta OHM (2019). HD32.3—WBGT, PMW, PPD measurement. Available at https://www.deltaohm.com/en/product/hd32-3-wbgt-pmw-ppd-measurement/. Accessed 2 Oct 2019.
DODGE (2018). World Green Building Trends. Bedford. Available at http://www.construction.com/products/dodge-research-analytics. Accessed 15 Jun 2020.
Dole C, Schroeder RG (2001). The impact of various factors on the personality, job satisfaction and turnover intentions of professional accountants. Managerial Auditing Journal, 16: 234–245.
DOS (2016). Jordan Statistical Yearbook. Department of Statistics, Jordan. Available at http://www.dos.gov.jo. Accessed 30 Sep 2019.
Elnaklah R (2020). Dataset for “Indoor environment quality and work performance in ‘green’ office buildings in the Middle East”. Bath: University of Bath Research Data. https://doi.org/10.15125/BATH-00863.
Elnaklah RA, Natarajan S (2019). A comparison of indoor air quality and employee absenteeism in ‘local’ and ‘imported’ green building standards. In: IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 609: 042089.
EN ISO 3382-3 (2012). Acoustics-Measurement of Room Acoustic Parameters. Part 3: Open plan offices. British Standard Institution.
EN ISO 52003-1 (2017). Energy Performance of Buildings—Indicators, Requirements, Ratings and Certificates. British Standard Institution.
EN ISO 7726 (2001). Ergonomics of the Thermal Environment—Instruments for Measuring Physical Quantities. British Standard Institution.
EN ISO 8996 (2004). Ergonomics of the Thermal Environment—Determination of Metabolic Rate. British Standard Institution.
EN ISO 9920 (2007). Ergonomics of the Thermal Environment—Estimation of the Thermal Insulation and Evaporative Resistance of a Clothing Ensemble. British Standard Institution.
EPA (2019). United States Environmental Protection Agency. Available at https://www.epa.gov/. Accessed 3 Oct 2019.
European Parliament (2010). Directive 2010/31/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 May 2010 on the energy performance of buildings. European Union: Official Journal of the European Union.
European Parliament (2018). Directive (EU) 2018/844 of the European parliament and of the council of 30 May 2018 amending directive 2010/31/EU on the energy performance of buildings and directive 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency. European Union: Official Journal of the European Union.
Federspiel CC, Fisk WJ, Price PN, Liu G, Faulkner D, et al. (2004). Worker performance and ventilation in a call center: analyses of work performance data for registered nurses. Indoor Air, 14: 41–50.
Fostervold KI, Nersveen J (2008). Proportions of direct and indirect indoor lighting—The effect on health, well-being and cognitive performance of office workers. Lighting Research & Technology, 40: 175–200.
Garland R (1991). The mid-point on a rating scale: Is it desirable. Marketing Bulletin, 2: 66–70.
Gobbi S, Puglisi V, Ciaramella A (2016). A rating system for integrating building performance tools in developing countries. Energy Procedia, 96: 333–344.
Gou Z, Lau S (2013). Post-occupancy evaluation of the thermal environment in a green building. Facilities, 31: 357–371.
Gou Z, Prasad D, Lau S (2013). Are green buildings more satisfactory and comfortable? Habitat International, 39: 156–161.
Gou Z, Prasad D, Lau S (2014). Impacts of green certifications, ventilation and office types on occupant satisfaction with indoor environmental quality. Architectural Science Review, 57: 196–206.
Hassouneh K, Al-Salaymeh A, Qoussous J (2015). Energy audit, an approach to apply the concept of green building for a building in Jordan. Sustainable Cities and Society, 14: 456–462.
Hedge A, Sakr W, Agarwal A (2005). Thermal effects on office productivity. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 49: 823–827.
Heiberger RM, Robbins NB (2014). Design of diverging stacked bar charts for likert scales and other applications. Journal of Statistical Software, 57(5): 1–32.
Hoorens V (1993). Self-enhancement and superiority biases in social comparison. European Review of Social Psychology, 4: 113–139.
Al Horr Y, Arif M, Kaushik A, Mazroei A, Katafygiotou M, et al. (2016). Occupant productivity and office indoor environment quality: A review of the literature. Building and Environment, 105: 369–389.
Hughes C, Natarajan S (2019). Summer thermal comfort and overheating in the elderly. Building Services Engineering Research and Technology, 40: 426–445.
IAQMG (2019). A Guide on Indoor Air Quality Certificatin Scheme for Officies and Public Places. Available at https://www.iaq.gov.hk/media/65346/new-iaq-guide_eng.pdf. Accessed 15 Jun 2020.
IEA (2013). Transition to Sustainable Buildings: Strategies And Opportunities to 2050. Available at https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2013/. Accessed 5 Oct 2019.
IEA (2019). CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion 2019. Available at https://webstore.iea.org/co2-emissions-from-fuel-combustion-2019. Accessed 5 Oct 2019.
IFC (2017). Measuring Call Center Performance Global Best Practices. International Finance Corporation. Available at https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/75ce96004cf85d4f8752c7f81ee631cc. Accessed 13 Jun 2020.
ISO 10551 (2019). Ergonomics of the Thermal Environment—Assessment of the Influence of the Thermal Environment Using Subjective Judgement Scales. British Standard Institution.
ISO 16814 (2008). Building Environment Design—Indoor Air Quality—Methods of Expressing the Quality of Indoor Air for Human Occupancy. British Standard Institution.
ISO 16817 (2017). Building Environment Design—Indoor Environment—Design Process for the Visual Environment. British Standard Institution.
ISO 17772-1 (2017). Energy Performance of Buildings—Indoor Environmental Quality. British Standards Institution.
ISO 7730 (2005). Ergonomics of the thermal environment—Analytical determination and interpretation of thermal comfort using calculation of the PMV and PPD indices and local thermal comfort criteria. Geneva: International Standardization Organization.
JGBC (2018). Your Green Building Guide in Jordan Booklet. Available at https://jordangbc.org. Accessed 1 Oct 2019.
Kessler R, Petukhova M, McInnes K (2007). Short WHO HPQ Absenteesim and Presenteeism Questionnaire. Available at https://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/hpq/ftpdir/absenteeism presenteeism scoring 050107.pdf. Accessed 15 Jun 2020.
Komendantova N, Irshaid J, Marashdeh L, Al-Salaymeh A, Ekenberg L, et al. (2017). Middle East North Africa Sustainable Electricity Trajectories Energy Pathways for Sustainable Development in the MENA Region. Available at https://menaselect.info/uploads/countries/jordan/Country_Fact_Sheet_Jordan.pdf. Accessed 16 Jun 2020.
de Kort Y, Smolders K (2010). Effects of dynamic lighting on office workers: First results of a field study with monthly alternating settings. Lighting Research & Technology, 42: 345–360.
de Korte EM, Spiekman M, Hoes-van Oeffelen L, van der Zande B, Vissenberg G, et al. (2015). Personal environmental control: Effects of pre-set conditions for heating and lighting on personal settings, task performance and comfort experience. Building and Environment, 86: 166–176.
Lan L, Lian Z (2009). Use of neurobehavioral tests to evaluate the effects of indoor environment quality on productivity. Building and Environment, 44: 2208–2217.
Leaman A (1995). Dissatisfaction and office productivity. Facilities, 13: 13–19.
Leaman A, Bordass B (2007). Are users more tolerant of ‘green’ buildings? Building Research & Information, 35: 662–673.
Liang H-H, Chen C, Hwang RL, Shih WM, Lo SC, Liao HY (2014). Satisfaction of occupants toward indoor environment quality of certified green office buildings in Taiwan. Building and Environment, 72: 232–242.
Lovett T, Lee J, Gabe-Thomas E, Natarajan S, Brown M, et al. (2016). Designing sensor sets for capturing energy events in buildings. Building and Environment, 110: 11–22.
MacNaughton P, Spengler J, Vallarino J, Santanam S, Satish U, et al. (2016). Environmental perceptions and health before and after relocation to a green building. Building and Environment, 104: 138–144.
Maula H, Hongisto V, Östman L, Haapakangas A, Koskela H, et al. (2016). The effect of slightly warm temperature on work performance and comfort in open-plan offices — a laboratory study. Indoor Air, 26: 286–297.
McKinney W (2010). Data structures for statistical computing in Python. In: Proceedings of the 9th Python in Science Conference, Austin, TX. USA.
Menadue V, Soebarto V, Williamson T (2014). Perceived and actual thermal conditions: case studies of green-rated and conventional office buildings in the City of Adelaide. Architectural Science Review, 57: 303–319.
Miller S (1984). Experimental Design and Statistics, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Milton DK, Glencross PM, Walters MD (2000). Risk of sick leave associated with outdoor air supply rate, humidification, and occupant complaints. Indoor Air, 10: 212–221.
Nematollahi O, Hoghooghi H, Rasti M, Sedaghat A (2016). Energy demands and renewable energy resources in the Middle East. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 54: 1172–1181.
Newsham GR, Birt BJ, Arsenault C, Thompson AJL, Veitch JA, et al. (2013). Do ‘green’ buildings have better indoor environments? New evidence. Building Research & Information, 41: 415–434.
Nishihara N, Yamamoto Y, Tanabe S (2002). Effect of thermal environment on productivity evaluated by task performances, fatigue feelings and cerebral blood oxygenation changes. In: Proceedings of Indoor Air Conference.
Oliphant T (2006). A guide to NumPy. Available at https://numpy.org/. Accessed 10 Jun 2020.
Oxford Brookes University (2019). Brookes Electronic Practice Assessment Document, BePAD. Available at https://bepad.org.uk/. Accessed 15 Oct 2019.
Paul WL, Taylor PA (2008). A comparison of occupant comfort and satisfaction between a green building and a conventional building. Building and Environment, 43: 1858–1870.
Pei Z, Lin B, Liu Y, Zhu Y (2015). Comparative study on the indoor environment quality of green office buildings in China with a long-term field measurement and investigation. Building and Environment, 84: 80–88.
Pournik O, Ghalichi L, Tehrani Yazdi AR, Tabatabaee Jabali SM, Ghaffari M, et al. (2012). Reliability and validity of Persian version of World Health Organization Health and Work Performance Questionnaire in Iranian health care workers. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 3(1): 33–38.
Python Software Foundation (2020). The Python Language Reference. Available at https://docs.python.org/3/reference/. Accessed 10 Jun 2020.
R Core Team (2019). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Available at https://www.r-project.org/. Accessed 2 Jun 2020.
Rashid M, Zimring C (2008). A review of the empirical literature on the relationships between indoor environment and stress in health care and office settings. Environment and Behavior, 40: 151–190.
Ravindu S, Rameezdeen R, Zuo J, Zhou Z, Chandratilake R (2015). Indoor environment quality of green buildings: Case study of an LEED platinum certified factory in a warm humid tropical climate. Building and Environment, 84: 105–113.
Roelofsen P (2002). The impact of office environments on employee performance: The design of the workplace as a strategy for productivity enhancement. Journal of Facilities Management, 1: 247–264.
Sediso BG, Lee MS (2016). Indoor environmental quality in Korean green building certification criteria—certified office buildings—occupant satisfaction and performance. Science and Technology for the Built Environment, 22: 606–618.
Singh A, Syal M, Grady SC, Korkmaz S (2010). Effects of green buildings on employee health and productivity. American Journal of Public Health, 100: 1665–1668.
Srebric J (2010). Opportunities for Green Building (GB) Rating Systems to Improve Indoor Air Quality Credits and to Address Changing Climatic Conditions. Washington. Available at http://epa.gov/iedweb00/pdfs/jelena_draft_paper_11-4-10.pdf. Accessed 3 Nov 2020.
Tanabe SI, Haneda M, Nishihara N (2015). Workplace productivity and individual thermal satisfaction. Building and Environment, 91: 42–50.
Tham KW, Wargocki P, Tan Y (2015). Indoor environmental quality, occupant perception, prevalence of sick building syndrome symptoms, and sick leave in a Green Mark Platinum-rated versus a non-Green Mark-rated building: A case study. Science and Technology for the Built Environment, 21: 35–44.
Thatcher A, Milner K (2012). The impact of a ‘green’ building on employees’ physical and psychological wellbeing. Work, 41: 3816–3823.
Thatcher A, Milner K (2016). Is a green building really better for building occupants? A longitudinal evaluation. Building and Environment, 108: 194–206.
Thomas LE (2010). Evaluating design strategies, performance and occupant satisfaction: a low carbon office refurbishment. Building Research & Information, 38: 610–624.
UNFCCC (1998). Kyoto Protocol to The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. United Nation.
USGBC (2019). LEED (The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System. Available at http://www.usgbc.org. Accessed 2 Oct 2019.
Vallat R (2018). Pingouin: statistics in Python. Journal of Open Source Software, 3: 1026.
Veitch JA, Charles KE, Farley KMJ, Newsham GR (2007). A model of satisfaction with open-plan office conditions: COPE field findings. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 27: 177–189.
Vellei M, Natarajan S, Biri B, Padget J, Walker I (2016). The effect of real-time context-aware feedback on occupants’ heating behaviour and thermal adaptation. Energy and Buildings, 123: 179–191.
Walikewitz N, Jänicke B, Langner M, Meier F, Endlicher W (2015). The difference between the mean radiant temperature and the air temperature within indoor environments: A case study during summer conditions. Building and Environment, 84: 151–161.
van der Walt S, Colbert SC, Varoquaux G (2011). The NumPy array: A structure for efficient numerical computation. Computing in Science & Engineering, 13: 22–30.
Wargocki P, Wyon DP, Baik YK, Clausen G, Fanger PO (1999). Perceived air quality, sick building syndrome (SBS) symptoms and productivity in an office with two different pollution loads. Indoor Air, 9: 165–179.
Wei W, Ramalho O, Mandin C (2015). Indoor air quality requirements in green building certifications. Building and Environment, 92: 10–19.
WGBC (2016). Building the Business Case: Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Green Offices. World Green Building Council. Available at https://www.worldgbc.org/sites/default/files/WGBC_BtBC_Dec2016_Digital_Low-MAY24_0.pdf. Accessed 4 Jun 2020.
WGBC (2017). Health, Wellbeing & Productivity in Offices: The next chapter for green building. UK Green Building Council. Available at https://www.ukgbc.org/ukgbc-work/health-wellbeing-productivity-offices-next-chapter-green-building/. Accessed 14 Jun 2020.
Wickham H, Averick M, Bryan J, Chang W, McGowan LD, et al. (2019). Welcome to the tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(43): 1686.
Witterseh T, Wyon DP, Clausen G (2004). The effects of moderate heat stress and open-plan office noise distraction on SBS symptoms and on the performance of office work. Indoor Air, 14: 30–40.
Yudelson J, Meyer U (2013). The World’s Greenest Buildings: Promise Versus Performance in Sustainable Design. New York: Routledge.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Mr Mualla for helping with data collection, Dr Nick McCullen for assistance with Raspberry-Pi loggers, and Dr Ian Walker for helping in the design of the questionnaire, and the management of the surveyed buildings for allowing the authors to conduct the study. This work is supported by Al-Ahliyya Amman University in Jordan. D. Fosas reports funding from the UK EPSRC project “The Active Building Centre Research Programme” [EP/V012053/1].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Previous version: This paper is an extension of work originally presented in the conference “Indoor Air quality, Ventilation, and Energy Conservation in Buildings” (Elnaklah and Natarajan 2019).
Data Access statement: Data presented in this study are openly available at https://doi.org/10.15125/BATH-00863
Electronic Supplementary Material
Rights and permissions
Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Elnaklah, R., Fosas, D. & Natarajan, S. Indoor environment quality and work performance in “green” office buildings in the Middle East. Build. Simul. 13, 1043–1062 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-020-0695-1
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-020-0695-1