CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Housing is one of the three basic needs of mankind and it is the most important for the physical survival of man after the provision of food. Many researchers Kadir (2005), Aribigbola (2008), Adedeji (2005), Ademiluyi and Raji (2008) have viewed housing shortage as a result of urbanization which resulted in increase in population in urban centers. In Nigeria, government has actively sought to alleviate the problem of housing by addressing basic needs of the urban poor through ambitious initiatives such as public housing schemes (Wahab, 1983). These public housing initiatives have been implemented for over five decades with the completion and occupation of thousands of houses in different housing estates spread all over the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. Reconnaissance or pilot survey done by the researchers on some of the public housing estates in the study area reveals that most of the building units have been modified while the remaining ones are currently undergoing modification.
It has been established that the failure of many public and private housing projects in most developing countries is the non-inclusion or lack of consideration for relevant inputs emanating from the end-users or occupants of residential developments. Often, the design of a new residential development has been patterned along designers’ idea and perception (Jiboye, 2011). Also, the designers and all those responsible for such development devote considerable effort to anticipating how future residents will look like rather than considering its suitability towards ensuring a level of satisfaction to its occupants. Given that every facility occupies a unique place in meeting the set design aspirations, completed residential buildings should not only be fit for the purpose of the users, but also be able to perform their functions in such ways as to ensure relative residents’ satisfaction (Liu, 1999). Housing planners and developers, either private or public, are required to have an understanding of how a building is performing when providing service for clients. Comparing the building in use to their design intentions can provide useful feedbacks to guide future design decisions. Because a building is inherently complex, an evaluation of building performance can cover an overwhelming array of technical, functional, social and aesthetic issues.
1.2 Problem Statement
Public houses are normally prediction of a shelter that meets human basic needs of habitation. Therefore, prediction can be right in some areas and wrong in others. Post occupancy evaluation (POE) is method used to identify these areas of strengths and weaknesses. However, literature on available POE studies revealed serious limitations in scope of previous studies (Ibem & Amole, 2010). Authors complained of failure in previous evaluation studies to significantly cover relevant important aspects of public housing performance and satisfaction. For instance, little is known about relevance of intangible building features (Non physical) such as ventilation, privacy and lighting in public housing performance and satisfaction (Gann, Salter & Whyte, 2003, Sinou & Kyvelou, 2006). Effects of socioeconomic attributes of occupants on satisfaction and performance were also over looked in building performance evaluation (Sinou & Kyvelou, 2006; Stevenson & Leaman, 2010). Some of the repercussions of those shortcomings were the gaps reported between design intent and final performance of buildings after occupation especially in developing countries like Nigeria (Loftness et al., 2009; Eni, 2015). In addition, fewer residential housing performance studies were reported in journals when compared to other areas like offices and educational properties (Djebarni & Al-Abed, 2000; Stevenson & Leaman, 2010), due to insufficient studies in the area. This led to inadequate knowledge of how public houses are performing after occupation, which could have provided a guide for future developments. Another problem was misuse of the concepts of performance and satisfaction. Implication of failure to ascertain the factor structure of satisfaction and performance constructs is misprioritisation of 4 attributes which lead to misallocation of resources for improvement (Busacca & Padula, 2005). Little attention given to occupants’ safety and health issues were also among the areas where shortcomings of present housing performance evaluation are visible in Nigeria (Ibem, 2011; Ibem & Amole, 2010). Health shock at birth, gastrointestinal system problems, respiratory symptoms and fever were all reported to have link with poor quality houses and provision of inadequate utilities in houses and neighbourhoods (Curtis et al., 2010; Afolabi et al., 2012). All the above contentions could have been averted, with proper housing performance evaluation framework. Such framework needs to be all encompassing to accommodate differences identified between building performance and satisfaction (Schwab & Cummings, 1970). Several authors (Swan & Combs, 1976; Tse & Wilton, 1988; Oliver & Desarbo, 1988) have argued that satisfaction and performance are different concepts and should be treated individually. Possibly this is because satisfaction is an inferential view on performance. Satisfaction indicates the housing ability to fulfil the occupants’ pleasurable level of consideration or use. Performance in this context is ability of building to achieve its predefined objectives of housing. Therefore, occupants experience seems to indicate performance more objectively than satisfaction. The difference between satisfaction and experience is degree of failure to achieve a complete and absolute declaration of reality. While satisfaction is emotional or sentimental opinion about how occupants perceived performance, experience is unlike satisfaction, is not qualified by subjective interpretation. Experience is feelings, though, reflection or cognition which resulted from direct contact between the subject (occupants) and the object (house). Therefore in experience there is complete reference to reality, hence indicates objective performance. Therefore, occupants acquire experience first when they get in contact (occupy) with the house. As a result of this contact, sensory organs will register experience with the building features. This is termed objective performance. Thereafter, the issue of whether the occupant is satisfied with the building features performance follows. Therefore, satisfaction went further to indicate whether the occupants experience with the building is pleasant or not. Hence, satisfaction is moderated performance 5 opinion, which is achieved when the building performance achieved occupants’ social values, determined by socioeconomic attributes. These socioeconomic attributes, which comprises of income, education, culture, age and gender, influence occupants’ satisfaction (Amole, 2009; Cole & Brown, 2009). This implied that irrespective of the objective (real) performance achieved by building features, the occupants’ satisfaction can be bias. Hence, this called for caution in interpretation of satisfaction is performance preposition. Building features may performance based on the design parameters but it may not satisfy some class of people due to their socioeconomic attributes. This is why public housing performance evaluation framework need to capture this moderation effect of socioeconomic attributes. As public houses were designed for low income occupation, high income occupants will report dissatisfaction with the houses, even if their experience with the real performance of the building features is positive. Hence, this study fills the above gap by proposing a framework for public housing performance evaluation using occupants’ satisfaction and experience. It was based on theory in Schwab & Cummings (1970), which identified satisfaction and performance as different constructs, and were moderated by some variables (socioeconomic attributes) at different levels. It involved identifying difference between satisfaction and performance (based on experience), and confirmation of socioeconomic attributes moderation effects on occupants’ satisfaction and experience using structural equation models (SEM). The SEM models need dependent and independent factors, hence the building features were divided into two; building components which are dependent and building features which are independent. Building components comprises of building accommodation such as rooms, kitchens and toilets. The independent features were divided into tangible and intangible building features. Tangible building features include floor, ceiling, walls and lighting facilities, while intangible building features are privacy, ventilation and lighting. Hence, performance evaluation framework could served as a guide, which can indicate the performance of the houses based on relationship between independent building features (tangibles and intangibles) and dependent building components.
1.3 Aim and Objectives
The aim of the study is to come up with parameters for post-occupancy evaluation using consumer feed-back information that will improve the performance of public housing delivery in the study area. The objectives are:
i. to establish the nature and extent of post-occupancy modification carried out in the residential buildings;
ii. to determine if socioeconomic attributes of income and education influence occupants’ satisfaction and experience in public housing performance evaluation in the study area.
iii. to determine the level of occupants’ satisfaction and experience with the performance of public housing in Nigeria.
iv. To determine level of occupants’ satisfaction and experience with performance of public housing features in the study area.
v. To propose a POE framework for public housing performance using occupants’ satisfaction and experience.
1.4 Research Hypotheses
H0: There is no significant relationship between occupants’ satisfaction and experience with performance of public housing in Nigeria.
H1: There is a significant relationship between occupants’ satisfaction and experience with performance of public housing in Nigeria.
H0: Socioeconomic attributes of income and education does not influence occupants’ satisfaction and experience in public housing performance evaluation in the study area.
H2: Socioeconomic attributes of income and education does influence occupants’ satisfaction and experience in public housing performance evaluation in the study area.
1.5 Research Questions
Based on the above statement of problem, this study answers questions;
i. What is the level of occupants’ satisfaction and experience with the performance of public housing in Nigeria?
ii. Do socioeconomic attributes of income and education influence occupants’ satisfaction and experience in public housing performance evaluation in the study area?
iii. What is the nature and extent of post-occupancy modification carried out in the residential buildings?
1.6 Significance of the study
This research is significant not only to government as developer and provider of public estates, but also to private real estate developers, facility managers, occupants of such estate and researchers based on the fact that;
The outcome of this research is expected to improve the design of future public residential buildings and minimize the incidence of modification and defacing of housing estates in the study area. By designing new buildings with an understanding of how similar buildings perform in-use, mistakes will be avoided and successful design features would be sustained (Nwankwo, 2013). The result of this research will establish the design factors that require adequate consideration at the programming and design stages. Information and data from the research will equally be a reference for teaching architects and future operators in the area of public residential building development. The continuous feed-back from post-occupancy evaluation on performance of buildings in-use can be used to document deficiencies as part of the justification of new construction or remodeling projects. The result of this study will also serve as a platform for empirical studies on public residential buildings performance in any other Urban Center in Nigeria. Post-occupancy evaluation aims at discovering how the completed building performs; determining possible misfits, mistakes or omission; and accumulating information for future programming and design (Duffy, 2008). According to Watson (2003) post-occupancy evaluation is a systematic evaluation of opinions about buildings in use, from the perspective of users. Post-occupancy evaluation by the actual users of buildings is therefore important in order to discover the root course of post-occupancy modification of these buildings and for improving future design quality.
1.7 Scope of the Study
This study covered only public houses located in Lagos state metropolis Nigeria. There are different forms and mechanisms in housing development in Nigeria in general and Lagos metropolis in particular. There are private informal houses, organised private sector houses, and public sectors houses. Private informal houses were developed by individuals, usually on land acquired through market purchase or grant by government. The houses were mostly owner occupier or for rentals. Organised private sector houses were developed by private liability companies either using bank loans or public-private partnership. Institutionalised houses were developed by government agencies or private corporate bodies which were mainly for staff use. Then there are public houses which were developed by government agencies or public liability companies on behalf of government but sold to private individuals on owner occupier bases. This study examines the last group, as they are public houses developed for people use. The focus of this study was to evaluate post occupancy evaluation of public tenement housing in Lagos State in the study area. Therefore, this study measure occupants’ satisfaction and experience on physical (called tangible), non-physical (called intangible) and building accommodations (called component) factors. Occupants’ socio-economic attributes such as education status and income level were also examined to determine their influence on experience and satisfaction of the occupants. Meanwhile, expected respondents to instruments of data collection for this study are occupants’ of public houses in the study area. As the houses were developed in clusters called ‘housing estate’ with prototype units in different combination of 1- bedroom, 2-bedrooms, 3-bedrooms in each housing estate, the study covers housing estates irrespective of number of rooms per unit.
