Emotional evaluation of lighting in university classrooms: a preliminary study

In educational environments an improvement in the quality of interior lighting has a direct benefit in increasing productivity and alertness of students and teachers, as well as very important implications for the energy efficiency of the education facilities but when a replacement with different lighting is analyzed, research may be tarnished by users’ pre-formed opinions, influenced by manufacturers and advertising. Consequently, it is necessary to understand the users’ point of view, even before of being subjected to any change in the lighting stimulus. Based on the Kansei Engineering framework, the general objective of this paper is to evaluate and compare the subjective evaluation of students’ pre-formed opinions to lighting provided by two types of lamps (fluorescent and LED). The subjective assessment of 427 university students has been compared over four years. The results show significant differences in students’ subjective evaluation. This finding highlights the existence of symbolic or functional attributes of the usefulness perceived by the student that could influence on investigations in which different types of lighting are compared.