Ability to work and health & safety: property user concerns and satisfaction

ABSTRACT The satisfaction of property users with facilities and property management has been found to be affected, amongst others, by building features. However, we argue that the importance of building features for user satisfaction varies across user concerns about their ability to work and health & safety. We hypothesise that building comfort increases in importance for the satisfaction of users with ability to work concerns, compared to those without these concerns. Additionally, building cleanliness is of higher importance to users with health & safety concerns than those without. In our empirical analysis, we use a sample of 1,895 respondents from a multi-year survey (2015–2019) and employ mixed-effects regression. Our results are in line with expectations and suggest a moderating effect of user concerns on the relations of building features and user satisfaction. We also find a consistent impact of user expectations on their satisfaction. Our findings are relevant to property and facilities managers as they suggest that accounting for user concerns allows a more differentiate understanding of user satisfaction, which may be particularly important following the COVID-19 pandemic.