Stressor oder Ressource? Die Bedeutung der bauphysikalischen Bedingungen für den Menschen am Beispiel der Lichtumgebung

Stressor or resourse? The significance of physical conditions and comfort exemplified by lighting conditions.

In the era of knowledge work, high performance increasingly depends on mental and psychological factors like concentration, mood, and motivation. Physical conditions in offices can either constitute a stressor depleting concentration and fatiguing users, or an environmental resource facilitating work activities and satisfying user needs and, in turn, heightening engagement and mood at work. To what extent certain physical conditions at the workplace function as resources or as stressors can be estimated based on three levels of comfort: physical, functional, and psychological comfort. This approach aims at supporting the creation of "psychologically sustainable" physical conditions, which conserve the users' psychological resources. In this article, this new understanding of comfort will be explained based on the underlying psychological processes and will be illustrated using the example of the physical variable of lighting.