Space choice, rejection and satisfaction in university campus

This paper explores the relationships between students’ activities, space choice patterns and satisfaction with campus space provision with the aim of establishing rational space utilization strategies. Many universities attempt to achieve their sustainability goals and address the constraints of space restrictions by implementing no-net growth policies and rational space utilization strategies. However, architects or facility managers often experience difficulties in keeping their commitment to such initiatives because they lack empirical data that explain the relationships in action between students and campus space. This paper demonstrates these relationships by analysing empirical data obtained from a university campus. University students completed 330 student-day time-use surveys and relevant post-occupancy evaluations for regular days at university. Three major space-choice-rejection patterns were found: (1) spaces for 56% of activities were chosen by students themselves; (2) students often struggled to find an appropriate space for their group activities; (3) students’ space choice behaviour was both common and influential on campus. A campus sustainability model of space choice-rejection was theorized based on the students’ post-occupancy evaluations, comprising anticipated space choice and intended space rejection. Three categories of relationships were established: space-oriented relationships with space environmental performance and spatial form; user-oriented relationships with user capacity and locational accessibility and equipment-oriented relationships with equipment adequacy and equipment condition.