Lee Eun Hee, Roberts Adam Charles, Kwok Kian-Woon, Car Josip, Soh Chee-Kiong, Christopoulos Georgios
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham Malaysia, Semenyih, Malaysia.
ETH Zurich, Future Resilient Systems, Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore, Singapore.
Sci Rep. 2025 Feb 28;15(1):7107. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-89590-0.
Underground office workspaces (UOW) have emerged as a sustainable option in land-scarce megacities. Yet, the main challenge is to design and manage underground spaces that cater to the psychological needs of occupants. By integrating insights from social psychology, urban studies, and policy making, we identify and provide evidence for a key psychological mechanism underlying the adoption of UOW: "locus of control", a psychological process that reflects whether people feel in control of their environment or see it as shaped by external forces. Study 1 (N = 1093) revealed that individuals who believe external forces strongly impact their lives tend to have more negative attitudes toward working at UOW, perceiving negative aspects of the underground environment (e.g., confinement) as more salient. Study 2 (N = 217) builds on the findings of Study 1 by demonstrating that individuals who feel strongly influenced by external forces actively avoid UOW as their workplace, as evidenced by differences in locus of control between current underground and aboveground office workers. The present findings uncover a key psychological mechanism that can facilitate the adoption of UOW and invites engineers, designers and management to develop UOW environments that promote a sense of control and autonomy, fostering sustainable and occupant-friendly urban infrastructure.
地下办公空间（UOW）已成为土地稀缺的大城市中的一种可持续选择。然而，主要挑战在于设计和管理能满足居住者心理需求的地下空间。通过整合社会心理学、城市研究和政策制定方面的见解，我们识别并提供了一个支持采用UOW的关键心理机制的证据：“控制点”，这是一个反映人们是觉得能掌控自己的环境还是认为环境由外部力量塑造的心理过程。研究1（N = 1093）表明，那些认为外部力量对其生活有强烈影响的个体往往对在地下办公空间工作持更消极的态度，将地下环境的负面方面（如封闭感）看得更突出。研究2（N = 217）基于研究1的结果进一步表明，那些感觉受外部力量强烈影响的个体积极避免将地下办公空间作为其工作场所，当前地下和地上办公人员在控制点方面的差异证明了这一点。本研究结果揭示了一个能促进采用地下办公空间的关键心理机制，并促使工程师、设计师和管理人员开发能促进控制感和自主感的地下办公空间环境，打造可持续且对居住者友好的城市基础设施。
