An integrated psychological score for occupants based on their perception and emotional response according to the windows’ outdoor view size

The outdoor view through windows is an indoor environmental factor that significantly affects mental health. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to develop an integrated psychological score of occupants based on their perception and emotional response according to the outdoor view size. This study used virtual reality technology to realize detailed outdoor view sizes and to control the external effects. In this way, it realized the experiment environment by setting four different outdoor view sizes (20, 40, 60, and 80%) as independent parameters. Through the psychological questionnaire, the subjects’ perception of space and their emotional response according to each outdoor view size, were evaluated at the same time. The results of the repeated-measures analysis of variance showed that among the nine factors, anger did not produce statistically meaningful results; as such, it was excluded from the analysis. In addition, through principal component analysis, three orthogonal components were extracted in linear combination. Finally, an integrated psychological score system was developed by using the three aforementioned components based on the weighted Euclidean distance. The results showed that most of the subjects felt psychological dissatisfaction with the 20% outdoor view size, and the highest psychological satisfaction with the 60% size. To verify the results, the subjects were categorized into two groups based on their integrated psychological scores, and their backward numbers test scores were compared. An integrated psychological score is particularly useful considering that the occupancy time is soaring due to the self-isolation caused by the recent COVID-19 pandemic.