IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v20y2023i2p1025-d1026868.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How to Alleviate Feelings of Crowding in a Working from Home Environment: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • So Yeon Park

    (Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Julianalaan 134, 2628BL Delft, The Netherlands)

  • Caroline Newton

    (Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Julianalaan 134, 2628BL Delft, The Netherlands)

  • Rachel Lee

    (Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Julianalaan 134, 2628BL Delft, The Netherlands)

Abstract

The sudden adoption of working from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic has required the reconfiguration of home spaces to fit space for remote work into existing spaces already filled with other domestic functions. This resulted in blurring of home and work boundaries, the potential lack of space for telecommuting from home, and telecommuters’ feelings of crowding. Numerous studies have shown the negative effects of crowding feelings on workers’ responses. This study focused on the issue of crowding in the residential workspace. An online survey was conducted to investigate how features of the home workspace correlate with telecommuters’ feelings of crowding and how these feelings affect satisfaction, health, and productivity. As a result, we found that various environmental features of home workspaces (e.g., house size, purpose of workspace, accessible balcony, lighting, noise, etc.), as well as psychological aspects (e.g., individual control over space use), had significant effects on telecommuters’ feelings of crowdedness. It was also found that feelings of crowding in the WFH environment can directly and indirectly affect teleworkers’ satisfaction with work environments, well-being, and work performance. Based on the results, we offered various potential ways to alleviate overcrowding issues in the WFH context.

Suggested Citation

  • So Yeon Park & Caroline Newton & Rachel Lee, 2023. "How to Alleviate Feelings of Crowding in a Working from Home Environment: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(2), pages 1-21, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:2:p:1025-:d:1026868
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/2/1025/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/2/1025/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Allen, Thomas J. (Thomas John), 1931- & Gerstberger, Peter G., 1973. "A field experiment to improve communications in a product engineering department : the non-territorial office," Working papers WP 653-73., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    2. Jegar Pitchforth & Elizabeth Nelson-White & Marc van den Helder & Wouter Oosting, 2020. "The work environment pilot: An experiment to determine the optimal office design for a technology company," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-33, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maira Worek & Barbara Covarrubias Venegas & Sonja Thury, 2019. "Mind Your Space! Desk Sharing Working Environments and Employee Commitment in Austria," European Journal of Business Science and Technology, Mendel University in Brno, Faculty of Business and Economics, vol. 5(1), pages 83-97.
    2. Parker, Lee D. & Schmitz, Jana, 2022. "The Reinvented accounting firm office: Impression management for efficiency, client relations and cost control," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    3. Rushana Khusanova & Suk Bong Choi & Seung-Wan Kang, 2019. "Sustainable Workplace: The Moderating Role of Office Design on the Relationship between Psychological Empowerment and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour in Uzbekistan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-20, December.
    4. Shahzad, Sally & Brennan, John & Theodossopoulos, Dimitris & Hughes, Ben & Calautit, John Kaiser, 2017. "Energy and comfort in contemporary open plan and traditional personal offices," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 185(P2), pages 1542-1555.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:2:p:1025-:d:1026868. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.