The effects of temperature on work performance in the typical office environment: A meta-analysis of the current evidence

The choice of temperature set-point for space heating and cooling in office buildings affects both the work performance of the occupants and the energy use. Identifying the acceptable temperature or temperature range that could maintain high work performance is therefore of critical importance but this issue remains controversial in previous literature. The purpose of this study is to identify the optimum values for typical office environments by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis. The study adhered to the PRISMA guidelines, searched through the Web of Science, Wiley Online Library, and Scopus databases, and included a total of 30 studies for quantitative analysis. The results indicate that, compared to the optimal temperature range of 21 ∼ 25 °C, there was no significant change in work performance under moderately reduced temperatures (<21 °C), while moderately raised temperatures (>25 °C) tended to result in lower work accuracy (p = 0.08), significantly increased response time (p = 0.002) and decreased composite performance index (p = 0.04). The effect of raised temperatures on performance became significant after exposure durations exceeding one hour (p = 0.04). The negative effects of moderately raised temperatures were more pronounced for tasks requiring more cognitive ability (p = 0.02). The analyses presented in this paper indicate that it is acceptable to reduce the temperature set-point to 17 °C in the heating season to reduce the energy demand, while mitigating solutions such as local cooling or lower-energy cooling will be necessary to cope with the challenges that climate change poses for space cooling.