A Comparative Study on the Influence of Different Decoration Styles on Subjective Evaluation of Hotel Indoor Environment

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the occupants’ subjective evaluation of the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of hotels with the same physical environment and different decoration styles, and to reveal the influence of different decoration styles on the subjective evaluation of the indoor environmental quality. The study found a hotel with three mainstream styles of modern simple style, British pastoral style, and modern Japanese style, and adopted standard rooms with the same area, pattern, lighting, orientation, and decoration cost. The only variable controlled was the decoration style, and the subjective feelings of customers on the physical environment were investigated. Based on the literature and 604 online comments, the researchers designed a questionnaire and collected 710 effective questionnaires for empirical analysis. The analysis results of KH coder and SPSS software (Chicago, IL, USA) show that ➀ the light environment in the indoor environment (including indoor natural lighting, lighting and other influencing factors) and non-light visual factors (including indoor color matching, plant layout, closeness to nature, decoration texture, space materials, decoration atmosphere and other factors) has the greatest impact on the subjective evaluation of decoration style, especially on the subjective evaluation of modern simple indoor environment. ➁ Light environment, air quality and non-light visual factors play a key role in the subjective evaluation of the indoor environment of the British pastoral-style hotels. ➂ The light environment, thermal environment and non-light visual factors are the most sensitive to the subjective evaluation of the indoor environment of modern Japanese-style hotels. ➃ Thermal environment, light environment, acoustic environment, air quality environment and non-light visual factors have the greatest impact on the subjective evaluation of the hotel indoor environment. Based on the findings, this study puts forward some suggestions to improve the interior environment of the hotel with different decoration styles to improve the quality and attractiveness of the hotel.

1. Introduction

With the rapid development of China’s tourism industry, the number of hotels has also increased rapidly. From 2016 to 2019, the number of hotel rooms in China increased to 17.62 million, with an annual growth rate of 7.71% [1]. Subsequently, user experience has become the focus of competition among hotels. With the increasing demand of consumers for hotels, hotels with different decoration styles are widely popular to meet the aesthetic needs of consumers. Customers’ perception of the overall value of the hotel mainly comes from the indoor environmental conditions of the hotel. The physical environment is a key function of consumer psychology, which links consumers with tangible products and services [2]. The physical environment has a positive impact on the mood, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions of residents [3]. With the increasing demand for hotel characteristics in the tourism market, hotel rooms with various decoration styles came into being. Different decoration styles mean different decoration materials, furniture layouts, and so on. Therefore, we get inspiration on whether different decoration styles affect customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel. This research question can provide valuable suggestions for hotel interior environment design, which is beneficial to the development of China’s tourism industry. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the United States has defined indoor environmental quality (IEQ), including the comprehensive psychological and physiological effects of five aspects of acoustic, thermal, light environment, air quality, and non-light visual factors on the residents [4]. Studies have shown that the values hotel customers care about most are seven dimensions, including thermal environment comfort, visual environment comfort, and indoor air quality [5,6]. Existing studies have preliminarily explored the impact of hotel aesthetic design on the subjective feelings of hotel consumers [7,8], but few scholars have paid attention to the impact of hotel decoration style on the subjective feelings of consumers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the residents’ subjective evaluation of hotel rooms with the same physical environment but different decoration styles and to reveal the impact of different decoration styles on the subjective evaluation of various indoor environments (

Table 1. Literature review framework.

Topics	Content	Authors and Published Year	Limitations
Hotel indoor design	“atmosphere” has a crucial impact on customer satisfaction.	Heide, M. et al. (2007) [9]	There are many professional studies concerning the general architecture of the physical space, but the hotel indoor decoration style rarely becomes the objective of study.
	The hotel indoor environment transformation through different decoration materials, decoration environment and plant configuration.	Song, J.H. (2005) [10]; Chen, Y.X. (2015) [11]; Han, Y.Y. et al. (2013) [12]
	Providing ideas on the space layout, furniture and materials, theme styles and green environmental protection of the hotel interior design from the perspective of subjective evaluation.	Nanu, L. et al. (2020) [13]; Xu, Z.X. et al. (2020) [14]; Han, H. (2020) [15]; Kim, J.J. et al. (2022) [16]
Subjective evaluation of hotel rooms	Indoor air quality and thermal environment have the greatest impact on the online rating of hotels.	Shen, Z.F. et al. (2021) [20]	Single index of IEQ is concerned, but IEQ has rarely been paid attention to as a whole in the research of hotel evaluation systems.
	Location and accessibility, employee performance and room quality are the most important factors of customer satisfaction.	Xu, X. et al. (2016) [21]
	The impact of online comments on customer satisfaction from the technical level of comments.	Zhao, Y.B. et al. (2019) [22]
	Providing a new idea for the air quality management of the hotel.	Zanni, S. et al. (2021) [23]; Cociorva, S. et al. (2017) [24]
	Measuring the acoustic environment of Okura Hotel in Tokyo and explaining the reasons for its reputation.	Nojima, R. et al. (2020) [25]
	The thermal environment and air quality level of the hotel have an impact on the hotel room satisfaction.	Han, H. et al. (2019) [26]
Hotel indoor environment evaluation system	A hotel lighting quality evaluation system and a lighting technology system for controlling lighting effects.	Zhang, Y.F. (2005) [27]	The indoor environment evaluation system is proposed, but the subjective evaluation of customers is not paid attention to.
	A TAIL rating scheme to obtain the overall quality rating of IEQ according to the quality of four indicators.	Wargocki, P. et al. (2021) [28]
	Putting forward a “Feng Shui” evaluation system through experimental methods, and verifying that the evaluation system of “Feng Shui” in China is scientific.	Jin, Z. et al. (2021) [29]
	The average contribution of thermal, acoustic, lighting environment and air quality parameters to the overall IEQ rating of buildings was 27%, 17%, 22%, and 34%, respectively.	Wei, W. et al. (2020) [30]

).

In terms of theoretical research on hotel indoor design, hotel decoration style, i.e., “atmosphere”, is considered to be extremely important by hotel operators, hotel designers, and architects. Similarly, it also has a crucial impact on customer satisfaction [9]. Many studies have explored the research field of indoor landscape, including the hotel indoor environment transformation through different decoration materials, decoration environment, and plant configuration [10,11,12]. With the refined development of the hotel industry and people’s continuous pursuit of experience, some scholars have provided ideas on the space layout, furniture and materials, theme styles, and green environmental protection of the hotel interior design from the perspective of subjective evaluation [13,14,15,16]. In terms of the indoor environment, there are many professional studies concerning the general architecture of the physical space, but the hotel indoor decoration style rarely becomes the objective of study [17,18,19] (Table 1).

In the aspect of subjective evaluation of hotel rooms, many studies explore the influencing factors of customers’ satisfaction with hotel IEQ through methods of analysis of online word-of-mouth. Shen et al. evaluated the IEQ of the five major chain economy hotels in China through online comment text mining and found that for economy hotels, indoor air quality and thermal environment have the greatest impact on the online rating of hotels [20]. Xu et al. explored the factors of hotel customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction and their importance ranking and found that location and accessibility, employee performance and room quality are the most important factors of customer satisfaction [21]. Zhao et al. investigated the impact of online comments on customer satisfaction from the technical level of comments [22]. At the same time, some scholars have paid attention to the influence of various indicators of the hotel indoor environment on customer satisfaction or comfort degree. Zanni et al. tested the air quality of hotel rooms under the background of epidemic prevention and control, thus providing a new idea for the air quality management of the hotel [23]; Cociorva et al. monitored and regulated the indoor air quality of the hotel utilizing technical operation [24]; Nojima et al. measured the acoustic environment of Okura Hotel in Tokyo and explained the reasons for its reputation [25]; Han et al. concluded through experiments that the thermal environment and air quality level of the hotel have an impact on the hotel room satisfaction [26]. In the research of hotel indoor environment evaluation systems, many researchers have innovated and put forward new IEQ evaluation systems based on existing ones. Zhang proposed a hotel lighting quality evaluation system and a lighting technology system for controlling lighting effects through field research [27]. Wargocki et al. proposed a TAIL rating scheme to obtain the overall quality rating of IEQ according to the quality of four indicators [28]. Jin et al. put forward a “Feng Shui” evaluation system through experimental methods and verified that the evaluation system of “Feng Shui” in China is scientific [29]. Wei found that the average contribution of thermal, acoustic, lighting environment, and air quality parameters to the overall IEQ rating of buildings were 27%, 17%, 22%, and 34%, respectively, through the parameters of IEQ evaluation in the green building certification plan [30]. Although IEQ has been paid attention to as a whole in the research of hotel evaluation systems, its influence on the subjective evaluation of hotel consumers for decoration style still needs to be supplemented (Table 1).

According to the existing literature, IEQ mainly includes five factors: acoustic, light, thermal environment, air quality and non-light factors. This study explores the satisfaction of consumers with the above five factors through questionnaires. The acoustic environment comfort refers to the existence of a comfortable acoustic environment without any uncomfortable noise. The noise of the hotel is mainly affected by the noise of the external environment of the hotel, the noise generated by the occupants, and the noise generated by the operation of the hotel equipment. Therefore, the measurement of the acoustic environment mainly includes the road traffic noise, the noise of other occupants, and the noise generated by the operation of various equipment. The light environment comfort is related to illuminance uniformity, brightness distribution, and other factors. The natural lighting and lighting of the hotel mainly affect the light environment of the hotel. Therefore, the light environment mainly focuses on the natural lighting and lighting of the hotel [31]. The thermal environment comfort is expressed as “psychological conditions that are satisfied with the thermal environment”, which is related to the physical factors in the natural ventilation and regulating environment. Therefore, the thermal environment is the measurement of the room temperature, indoor wind speed, humidity, and electrical heat dissipation of the hotel. The indoor air quality has a great impact on the health of the residents. It is directly related to the ventilation rate and the concentration of pollutants, and the supply of outdoor air can provide acceptable indoor air quality. The hotel occupants primarily judge the air quality of the hotel by the odor and ventilation of the hotel air. Therefore, the measurement of air quality mainly includes odor, air purification facilities, and indoor ventilation [32]. According to the analysis of the hotel review text, the non-light visual factors in this study refer to the visual factors that can affect the subjective evaluation of customers excluding the light environment in the hotel indoor environment, mainly including the internal color matching, plant layout, closeness to nature, decoration texture, space design, decoration atmosphere, and other factors.

Based on the above literature, it can be concluded that in the research on the hotel interior environment, many research objects focus on the hotel interior building materials, plant furnishings, furniture, etc. Additionally, some attach importance to “atmosphere”, but few scholars quantify the difference in subjective feelings brought by the hotel decoration style. In terms of the research on the subjective evaluation of customers, scholars mainly use the network text as the research data source to explore the factors that affect hotel satisfaction and do not give a detailed description of the index impact of each dimension. Therefore, the research on the relationship between hotel interior decoration style and customers’ subjective feelings needs to be supplemented and improved.

The innovations of this study are as follows:➀ although the literature has explored the influencing factors of customer satisfaction, decoration style is rarely paid attention to as an influencing factor. Therefore, the innovation of this study is to link the decoration style with the subjective evaluation of customers, collect the customer evaluation data using the questionnaire method, and explore the impact of decoration style on the subjective evaluation of customers. ➁ To date, many studies have focused on the indicators of the indoor environment, such as air quality and acoustic environment. However, these studies only focus on the individual indicators of the indoor environment. This study takes the five indicators of the indoor environment as a whole to explore the overall evaluation of the indoor environment by customers under different decoration styles. This research is very lucky to find a popular multi-style hotel in Guangzhou that has just been renovated, which fully meets our research needs to explore the impact of different decoration styles on the subjective feelings of occupants in the same physical environment. The research first obtains the online evaluation text of the hotel through the website and uses KH coder software to conduct word frequency analysis and semantic network analysis on the online evaluation text, puts forward hypotheses, and designs online questionnaires. A questionnaire survey on the subjective evaluation of 856 guests who have stayed in the hotel was conducted. SPSS quantitative analysis software was used for empirical analysis to reveal the impact and difference of different decoration styles on the subjective evaluation of the guests.

The problem definitions of this study are: firstly, whether the hotel indoor environment (including acoustic environment, thermal environment, light environment, air quality, and non-light visual factors) will have a positive impact on the subjective evaluation of customers; second, whether there are differences in customers’ evaluation of IEQ factors under different decoration styles; thirdly, in the hotel environment with different decoration styles, what is the most influential factor in the subjective evaluation of customers.

Our research contributions have three points: ➀ exploring the relationship between different decoration styles and customers’ subjective evaluation, which to a certain extent makes up for the research gap on the impact of decoration styles on customer satisfaction. ➁ Starting from the IEQ factors, we explore the subjective evaluation of customers on five factors, namely, acoustic environment, thermal environment, light environment, air quality, and non-light visual factors, under the environment of different decoration styles, and then explore whether there are differences in the subjective evaluation of customers under different decoration styles. ➂ Through the questionnaire survey, the most important factors for customers in each decoration style of hotel rooms are obtained, which provides theoretical guidance for hotels to improve service quality and customer satisfaction.

2. Methodology

2.1. Method Design

To make the results of this study more objective and specific, the study used the online survey data to conduct text analysis to prepare for the questionnaire design. First, to make the final questionnaire more suitable for the hotel in Guangzhou, we adopted an online text analysis method. A questionnaire was designed in combination with a literature review. At the same time, combined with on-the-spot research, use the Questionnaire Star to conduct a questionnaire survey (the research framework of this paper is shown in Figure 1).

To highlight the influence of decoration style on guest room evaluation and reduce the influence of other physical factors on the subjective evaluation of the indoor environment of hotels with different decoration styles, the Shiyu Hotel in Guangzhou was selected as the main body of the investigation through network search and field inspection. Project case is located in the city center of China’s first-tier cities. It has 278 rooms and possesses a superior geographical environment and a large passenger flow. The renovation time of the hotel is one year, and the complaint rate of management and equipment services is low (Figure 2). Hotel room decoration styles include three mainstream decoration styles: modern simple, British pastoral style, and modern Japanese style (Figure 2). Modern simple style is one of the simple styles. In addition, simple styles include Chinese simple style, Mediterranean simple style, American simple style, European simple style, and Japanese simple style. Pastoral styles include British pastoral style, American pastoral style, Chinese pastoral style, French pastoral style, South Asian pastoral style, and Korean pastoral style. We chose a British pastoral style to differentiate it from the sample’s modern simple and modern Japanese styles. Japanese style is roughly divided into three types, simple Japanese style, modern Japanese style, and traditional Japanese style. At the same time, the three styles are relatively close. Then, define the hotel’s three styles in terms of color, material, lighting, etc. (

Table 2. Distinguish different hotel decoration styles.

Style	Features			The Case of This Study
	Color	Material	Light
Modern simple style	Black, white, gray tones, strong color contrast. Space color matching usually pays attention to the overall unity of space color, people’s psychological feelings and the needs of space composition, so as to create a harmonious and comfortable environment [33].	Emphasizing the texture of decorative materials, the choice of materials is also relatively wide.	The light and shadow part is dominated by natural light from glass windows, supplemented by a mix of artificial light and artificial natural light.
British pastoral style	It pays great attention to the delicacy of the pattern and the softness of the color. Gives a fresh and comfortable feeling [34].	Rustic murals, luxurious chandeliers, lots of floral fabrics and more. Most of the furniture is handcrafted and the material is mainly solid wood.	The principle of asymmetry, the light is softer. Lamp lines are generally curved.
Modern Japanese style	The colors are simple, restrained and elegant [35].	Use more wood materials, such as natural wood, stone, bamboo, etc. Metal is rarely used.	The light is softer, and the interior space environment brought by it tends to be elegant and soft due to the blending of light and shadow, with a hazy beauty.

). Selecting standard rooms with the same area (21.24 m³), layout, lighting, orientation, and decoration cost, the purpose is to control the only variable to conduct a subjective evaluation and comparison study for the decoration. At the same time, the outdoor sunny and cloudy weather is selected for indoor sampling, and the sampling time is from 12:00 noon to 4:00 p.m. When the curtains are drawn, the sampled temperature is basically 26.1–26.3 °C (average 26.2 °C), the noise level is 42–44 decibels (average 43 decibels), and the indoor wind speed is 2.5–2.7 m/s (average 2.6 m/s), the indoor light intensity is 70–75 xl (the light intensity of different decoration styles is different).

Ctrip, as the No. 1 hotel customer review website in China, is highly authoritative and representative. The online text research collected Chinese reviews of the hotel on Ctrip during the Spring Festival from 1 January to 1 March 2022. This research is based on network text materials, using the word frequency analysis and semantic network analysis functions of KH Coder, the analysis conclusions are used as the main basis for designing the questionnaire, and the SPSS results are used for auxiliary verification.

2.2. Text Analysis

KH Coder is an unstructured text analysis and data mining software. The main functions of the software include word frequency, cluster analysis, etc. Restricted by statistical laws, a few reviews cannot objectively and truly reflect hotel customer satisfaction. Therefore, decoration styles below 200 are not involved in hotel customer satisfaction rankings or analysis. By eliminating invalid reviews and choosing the hotel’s three decoration styles: modern simple, British pastoral, and modern Japanese, a total of 604 physiological and psychological review data were obtained. Through KH Coder, word frequency analysis and semantic network analysis are carried out on the obtained reviews, then the environmental factors that may affect the subjective evaluation of residents are extracted, and subjective evaluation analysis is carried out from the aspects of the overall evaluation and cognitive evaluation.

➀ Overall subjective evaluation analysis

KH Coder extracts the text and finds that the total distribution of all high-frequency words evaluated by customers is shown in

Table 3. Total distribution table of all high-frequency words for customer reviews.

Class	Word	Frequency	Word	Frequency	Word	Frequency
Adj	Clean	198	Bad	81	Strong	51
	Comfortable	141	Free	75	Hot	48
	Front	123	Beautiful	69	Sound	48
	Convenient	87	Nice	63	Quiet	45
	Poor	87	Japanese	51	Suitable	45
Noun	Hotel	417	Lot	96	Morning	63
	Service	267	Price	87	Attitude	60
	Time	189	Door	84	Decoration	57
	Water	183	Child	81	Sea	57
	Desk	159	Facility	81	Bathroom	54
	Night	138	Floor	81	Bit	54
	Environment	132	Pool	75	Lighting	54
	Style	105	Smell	75	Bed	51
	Homestay	102	Location	72	Parking	51
	Air	99	People	72	House	48
	Day	99	Experience	66	Money	48
	Breakfast	96	Insulation	66	Friend	45
Verb	Stay	147	Choose	69	Play	57
	Recommend	78	Live	69	Check	54
	Feel	72	Eat	63	Change	48
	Sleep	72	Book	57	Shower	45

. By setting stop words and eliminating invalid prepositions and pronouns, high-frequency words are mostly nouns and adjectives, and nouns are room, hotel, environment, clean, service, etc., adjectives mainly reflect the indoor environment and hotel services. In addition, the hotel appeared the most frequently, appearing 417 times in 604 comments. Regarding the decoration style of the hotel, there are adjectives Japanese (51), pastoral (33), idyllic (18), rustic (9), modern simple (36), and the noun style (105), which confirms the customer’s attention and inclination to the decoration style.

➁ Cognitive subjective evaluation analysis

Through the cluster analysis of the co-occurrence network of the high-frequency words, modular processing is selected, and a total of fourteen groups of relational networks are obtained (Figure 3). Comparing and analyzing the co-occurrence network graph and word frequency, it can be seen that the influencing factors of subjective evaluation are mainly manifested in the indoor environment of the destination, travel companions, and the environment and services provided by the hotel:

The 24 groups of rings were sorted into three groups: First, cognitive evaluation of the indoor environment. With the hotel as the core, the words such as room and homestay are expanded as a circle. The above vocabulary is a group, including facilities, location, sound insulation, air conditioning, taste, comfort, etc., which reflects the influence of the indoor environment on subjective evaluation. Second, traveler’s cognitive evaluation of fellow travelers. Most tourists travel together, and the related high-frequency words are children, family members, friends, etc. Third, cognitive evaluation of the hotel environment atmosphere. Most people think that the hotel’s service is friendly, and the overall accommodation is comfortable. The most frequent texts include comfort, caring, completeness, thoughtfulness, and details. The above three points combined with the relevant literature provide the design direction for the questionnaire design.

2.3. Questionnaire Design

By combing the results of online texts and analyzing the evaluation dimensions of existing research [36], the questionnaire has 8 dimensions, 29 attributes, and 52 questions. The research mainly adopts Choi, K.’s indoor environmental quality (IEQ) evaluation system to establish the subjective evaluation dimension.

In addition to the hotel’s factor variables required for this research, there are also differences between individual tourists. Appendix A summarizes the measurement properties of the relevant variables. In the questionnaire, the satisfaction selection was used to evaluate the indoor environmental quality, including the overall environment, heat, air quality, light, sound, and non-light visual factors. The overall customer satisfaction with the comprehensive evaluation of the hotel was also investigated. In each choice, a score scale or option is provided, through specific questions and their corresponding scale notes, the chosen option expresses the guest’s subjective feelings.

The importance and satisfaction of subjective evaluations of different types of hotels were assessed using the Likert scale, ranging from extremely unimportant/unsatisfactory (1) to extremely important and extremely satisfactory (5). To ensure the validity and scientific nature of the questionnaire, this study set up a pre-investigation, randomly selecting 30 people among consumers and giving incentives in the form of gift certificates. Then, combined with expert consultation, the questions were supplemented with revisions and explanations to determine the questionnaire.

The questionnaire consists of 4 parts (as shown in Figure 4): (1) screening the respondents’ questions, only the respondents who have stayed in the case hotel can continue the investigation, otherwise, they will be guided to an ending. (2) Personal information, such as the respondent’s gender, age, occupation, and monthly income. (3) Other relevant information of the respondent, such as the hotel room type, decoration style, traveler, departure place, and reasons for choosing the hotel. (4) Respondents’ subjective evaluation of hotel rooms, based on the results of IEQ theory and text analysis, and then the overall, and refinement of satisfaction assessments.

To ensure the quality of the questionnaire and prevent invalid questionnaires, options unrelated to the research topic were set in the topic selection. This filters out respondents who did not answer the question. At the same time, the questionnaire is set to answer more than 3 min to be effective.

To avoid order effects [37], different sections of the questionnaire will be randomly adjusted in order.

2.4. Investigation Method

To avoid the limitations and differences between online research and offline research [38], the research adopts online random and offline fixed-point methods for sampling and obtains samples scattered in hotels with different decoration styles. The study selects the Canton Fair in April 2022 (China Import and Export Fair, held in Guangzhou in the spring and autumn every year, a comprehensive international trade fair with the longest history, the highest level, the largest scale, the largest number of buyers and the widest distribution in China) to investigate. The study selects the Canton Fair in April 2022 (China Import and Export Commodities Fair, held in Guangzhou every spring and autumn, as the comprehensive international trade fair with the longest history, highest level, largest scale, and most buyers) and the most widely distributed in China) to investigate. Conduct offline surveys during trade events (peak hotel occupancy). This can not only ensure the richness of customers, but also ensure the diversity of regions and ages of customer samples. Tourists who have stayed in a hotel at least once in the past 12 months and are currently living to constitute the main body of this sample and were selected and invited to participate in the survey. The online survey tool is Questionnaire Star (China’s most professional online questionnaire, examination, evaluation, and voting platform, focusing on providing users with services such as online questionnaires, data research, and result analysis), and then the questionnaires are randomly distributed in the hotel private domain fan official account and We Chat (the most popular social software in China) group; offline research, after obtaining the assistance of hotel management personnel, will conduct rewarded interviews for guests who are checking out and who have already checked in. Finally, a total of 856 questionnaires were recovered, including 710 valid questionnaires (620 online and 90 offline), and the questionnaire response rate was 83%.

3. Result

3.1. Assumption Analysis

Based on IEQ theory, and also using KH Coder software to perform text analysis and network visualization analysis on network evaluation texts, the following hypothesis analysis model was proposed (Figure 5):

➀ Analysis of influencing factors of hotel indoor environment

H1. 

Hotel air quality environment will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s indoor environment.

H2. 

Hotel thermal environment will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s indoor environment.

H3. 

Hotel acoustic environment will have a positive impact on the subjective evaluation of the hotel’s indoor environment by customers.

H4. 

Hotel light environment will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s indoor environment.

H5. 

Hotel non-light visual factor environment will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s indoor environment.

➁ Hotel modern simple style room type and indoor environment influencing factors

Many scholars have found that modern simple style achieves harmony in visual effects with simple and smooth lines, black, white, gray, and log colors, and other non-light visual factors; in terms of light environment factors such as space lighting, it combines overall and local lighting to satisfy the owner. Many studies have confirmed that non-light visual factors and light environment have a greater impact on customers’ subjective ratings of the hotel’s modern simple style room type C [39,40]. Based on the above research results and questionnaire survey results, the following research hypotheses are proposed:

H6a. 

The hotel’s light environment will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s modern simple style room type.

H6b. 

The non-light visual factors of the hotel will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s modern simple style room type.

➂ Hotel British pastoral-style room type and indoor environment influencing factors

Many studies have confirmed the important influence of non-light visual factors on customers’ subjective evaluation of British pastoral-style room type [41], but few studies have studied the effect of light factors and air quality on the creation of a quiet, natural, pleasant, and relaxed atmosphere in British pastoral-style room type [42]. Through the analysis of KH Coder text of online evaluation, this study finds that the two factors of light and air quality have a great influence on the hotel’s British pastoral-style room type, and then put forward the following assumptions:

H7a. 

The light environment of the hotel will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s British pastoral-style room type.

H7b. 

The air quality environment of the hotel will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s British pastoral-style room type.

➃ Hotel modern Japanese-style room type and indoor environmental influencing factors

Studies have shown that modern Japanese-style room type uses a variety of retro furniture such as tatami and fan-shaped windows as decorations to highlight elegance and simplicity and go deep into the realm of Zen [43,44]. Therefore, the adjustment of factors such as room temperature and wind speed included in the thermal environment may be of important significance and the Japanese-style house type pays special attention to the use of “light”, most of them are mainly warm-toned lights. So, putting forward the following assumptions:

H8a. 

The light environment of the hotel will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s modern Japanese-style room type.

H8b. 

The thermal environment of the hotel will have a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s modern Japanese-style room type.

➄ Hotel indoor environment and customer subjective evaluation

Based on the analysis of five influencing factors in IEQ theory, hypotheses are put forward:

H9. 

The indoor environment of the hotel will have a positive impact on the overall customer subjective evaluation of the hotel.

3.2. Data Analysis Method

The framework of this research is shown in Figure 6 below. First, the reliability, validity, and factor analysis of the questionnaire were carried out. After testing the feasibility of factor analysis of the questionnaire, a demographic descriptive analysis of customer reviews was carried out. Then, principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out to determine the influence of various factors of the hotel’s indoor environment on the subjective evaluation of tourists [43,45]. The study further applied factor analysis to eliminate the redundancy of correlated variables to reduce the number of available composite data [46]. To reveal the significant influence, significant difference, and joint distribution of different decoration styles on the subjective evaluation of the hotel, the study used SPSS to carry out single factor ANOVA, independent sample t-test, and further analysis of the data using the custom table to obtain in-depth data analysis conclusions and verify the hypothesis.

3.3. Evaluation of the Reliability and Validity of the Scale

(1) Reliability test

This study mainly used SPSS 25.0 to test the reliability of the scale. The larger the Cronbach’s Alpha value, the greater the reliability of the scale. The coefficient should not be less than 0.6, and the questionnaire should be readjusted if it is below 0.6. The test results showed that the coefficient of the actual satisfaction scale was 0.962, and the coefficient of each sub-scale must be greater than 0.8, and most of them were greater than 0.9; then according to the criterion that the overall correlation coefficient (CITC) of the project proposed by the scholar Churchill should not be less than 0.5, the model was trusted. The results showed that the CITC values were all above 0.7, which meant that the scale of this research had a high degree of internal consistency and a small error value in the survey of hotel user groups, that is, the reliability of the questionnaire was high, and the reliability was strong.

(2) Validity test

The KMO test and Bartlett’s test of sphericity were used to analyze whether factor analysis was possible. The results of the KMO test showed that the value of KMO was 0.958. At the same time, the results of the Bartlett sphericity test showed that the significant p value was 0.000 ***, infinitely close to 0, and the level was significant, rejecting the null hypothesis, indicating that this questionnaire had validity, and there was the correlation between variables, which was suitable for factor analysis. The factor analysis results showed that there was at least one value greater than 0.4 in the loading values of all the variables in the row, so the variables were reasonable and did not need to be deleted.

(3) Test the convergent validity of the model

Confirmatory factor analysis is performed on the convergent validity of the measurement model. Further evaluation of the structural model can only be performed if the fit of the measurement model meets acceptable standards. The test results showed that the standardized factor loadings of all dimensions were above 0.7 and were significant; the compositional reliability CR values were all higher than 0.8, and the average variance extraction (AVE value) was greater than 0.5. Therefore, the model had good convergent validity.

3.4. Demographic Description of the Sample

First, study participants were screened according to the inclusion criteria; second, questionnaires were collected through screening questions, 856 questionnaires were initially collected, and after excluding outliers, a total of 710 valid questionnaires were used for data analysis. Among them, the majority of respondents were women, accounting for 62%; the age group accounted for the largest proportion of the 18–29-year-old group (93%) because the way such as giving gifts was more attractive to young women; most respondents had a bachelor’s degree (88%). For profession, middle school students (84%) accounted for the majority; 77% of all valid participants had a monthly income of less than 3000; this study was mainly based on college students. To be realistic, there are no barriers to the survey respondents, so there are some non-college student groups of respondents. The specific results can be seen in the following Figure 7:

Additional relevant demographic information (Figure 8) was measured to further understand respondents. Respondents mostly chose the modern simple style (60.6%), followed by the British pastoral style (22.7%) and the modern Japanese style (16.7%); most respondents traveled with friends (40.8%); leisure travel was the reason why most respondents stayed in hotels (79.3%).

3.5. Basic Assumptions

(1) Principal Component Analysis

Perform principal component analysis and select the maximum variance orthogonal method for rotation, as shown in

Table 4. Subjective evaluation and principal component analysis of hotel room types with different decoration styles.

Constituent	Initial Eigenvalue			Extract the Sum of Squares of the Load			Sum of Squares of Rotating Loads
	Total	Percent Variance	Cumulative%	Total	Percent Variance	Cumulative%	Total	Percent Variance	Cumulative%
1	18.693	47.932	47.932	18.693	47.932	47.932	8.231	21.106	21.106
2	5.934	15.215	63.147	5.934	15.215	63.147	7.356	18.861	39.967
3	1.859	4.766	67.913	1.859	4.766	67.913	5.931	15.209	55.176
4	1.237	3.173	71.086	1.237	3.173	71.086	3.908	10.020	65.196
5	1.057	2.710	73.796	1.057	2.710	73.796	3.354	8.600	73.796

and

Table 5. Index and proportion of each component after rotation.

Index	Constituent 1	Index	Constituent 2	Index	Constituent 3	Index	Constituent 4	Index	Constituent 5
Botany arrangement	0.847	The general condition of the thermal environment	0.806	Hotel experience perception	0.892	Surrounding environment	0.518	Noise from other occupants	0.679
Closeness to nature	0.785	Room temperature	0.806	General information about the hotel	0.890	Traffic convenience	0.649	Noise in public areas	0.658
Decorative atmosphere	0.771	Heat dissipation of electrical appliances	0.799	Hotel indoor environment	0.875	Infrastructure	0.623	Overall acoustic environment	0.637
Decoration texture	0.769	Wind velocity	0.779	Overall air quality	0.864	Personal and property safety	0.578	Road traffic noise	0.556
Space design	0.723	Humidity	0.754	Air purification facilities	0.855	Sanitary condition	0.574	Operating noise of various equipment (air conditioner, fan)	0.553
Personalized service	0.718	Lighting	0.601	Odor condition	0.843	Cost performance of the hotel	0.563
Color	0.699	General conditions of the light environment	0.571	Hotel service quality	0.829
Catering	0.668	Ventilation	0.558	External environment of the hotel	0.824
General situation of non-light visual factors	0.667	Operating noise of various equipment	0.513
Experience special activities	0.632
Surrounding environment	0.569
Employee service level	0.513

. For the five principal components extracted from Table 4, the cumulative variance contribution rate reached 73.796%, and the contribution rate of variable explanation was greater than 70%, indicating that the original data can be fully reflected; Table 5 revealed the indicators and proportions of the major components.

(2) Data analysis

This time, single factor analysis of variance, independent sample t-test, and custom table analysis were performed on the collected scores of three types of decoration styles: modern simple style, British pastoral style, and modern Japanese style, to study the following issues:

First: Whether the subjective evaluation of the hotel’s different decoration styles is significantly affected by the factors set in this questionnaire.

Second: Based on the IEQ theory to explore the most important factors affecting the subjective evaluation of guests in hotel room types with different decoration styles.

Third: The factors that have a greater impact on the judgment factors of the guests’ subjective evaluation of most hotel room types.

➀ Single Factor ANOVA

The single factor ANOVA study was used to determine the significant impact of different hotel decoration styles on the subjective evaluation of the guests. The results were shown in

Table 6. Results of single factor ANOVA on the rating of hotel 3 decoration style by various influencing factors.

ANOVA Score
Type		Sum of Squares	Degree of Freedom	Mean Square	F	Conspicuousness
Modern simple Style	Intergroup	37.191	37	1.005	1.804	0.002
	In group	1460.557	2622	0.557
	Total	1497.748	2659
British pastoral style	Intergroup	39.449	37	1.066	1.663	0.008
	In group	1242.500	1938	0.641
	Total	1281.949	1975
Modern Japanese style	Intergroup	105.782	37	2.859	4.517	0.000
	In group	4473.572	7068	0.633
	Total	4579.354	7105

:

From the results shown in the above table, it can be seen that different factors have a significant impact on the scores of different styles of room types.

➁ Independent Sample t-test

The test was mainly carried out by taking the average of all relevant factors and constructing a new dimension (for example, using the average of the overall scores of the four factors that measure air quality to form a test variable and named it the air dimension); The test value was subjected to an independent sample test to verify whether the new five dimensions were significantly different from the test value.

Then, the average score of the overall situation of each room type of the hotel decoration style was used as the test value, the average score of the indoor environment of each room type of decoration style was used as the test variable, and an independent sample test was carried out to determine whether the hotel’s indoor environment score was significantly different from the hotel’s overall score.

The structural relationship between variables, T value, and hypothesis test results were shown in

Table 7. Hypothesis test results.

Hypothesis	Relationship	T	Sig.	Conclusion
H1	Luminous environment→Hotel indoor environment	3.300	0.974	Support
H2	Acoustic environment→Hotel indoor environment	1.232	0.219	Support
H3	Thermal environment→Hotel indoor environment	−7.150	0.475	Support
H4	Air quality environment→Hotel indoor environment	7.286	0.100	Support
H5	Non-light visual factor environment→Hotel indoor environment	−3.133	0.202	Support
H6a	Luminous environment→Modern simple style	1.232	0.219	Support
H6b	Non-light visual factor environment→Modern simple style	−3.132	0.315	Support
H7a	Luminous environment→British pastoral style	−4.007	0.308	Support
H7b	Air quality environment→British pastoral style	6.614	0.308	Support
H8a	Luminous environment→Modern Japanese style	−4.063	0.389	Support
H8b	Thermal environment→Modern Japanese style	−6.216	0.202	Support
H9	Hotel indoor environment→Customers’ subjective overall score	7.117	0.154	Support

. All hypotheses had passed the t-test, and the path coefficients supported the hypothesis at the level of confidence α = 0.005.

It was further verified that the five dimensions of the IEQ theory had a significant impact on the subjective evaluation of customers.

➂ Custom Table

In addition, the author used a custom table to further verify the factors that had a greater impact on the different decoration styles of the hotel. The analysis results were shown in Figure 9 below:

The subjective scores of customers in modern simple style rooms were mainly affected by light environment and non-light visual factors, which were in line with the hypothesis. The factors of light environment and air quality played an important role in the subjective ratings of customers of British pastoral-style rooms, which were in line with the hypothesis; the subjective scores of customers of British pastoral-style rooms were greatly affected by non-light visual factors, which was attributed to the British pastoral style, showing the characteristics of the pastoral atmosphere through decoration, and paid more attention to non-light visual factors to create a natural space that met customer expectations. For modern Japanese-style hotel room types, light and the thermal environment were the core influencing factors of customers’ subjective ratings, which was in line with the hypothesis; the results showed that the subjective ratings of modern Japanese-style hotel room types were also greatly affected by non-light visual factors, mainly due to modern Japanese style was mainly created by non-light visual factors such as decoration atmosphere and home decoration such as tatami.

4. Discussion

4.1. Research Innovation

The innovation of this study is that starting from the hotel indoor environment, according to the IEQ definition of indoor environmental quality by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the hotel indoor environment is subdivided into acoustic, light, thermal, air quality, and non-light visual factors five dimensions to explore the impact of each dimension on the subjective evaluation of customers, innovating in subdivision angle. Furthermore, this study takes room types with different decoration styles of hotels as the research object and explores the similarities and differences in customers’ subjective evaluations of hotels with different decoration styles. The study found that the influencing factors of the indoor environment of three different decoration styles were different. Existing studies have not incorporated the hotel’s decoration style into the influencing factors of customers’ subjective evaluation, which is another innovation of this study. The study also found that for the same hotel with different decoration styles, the factors that mainly affect the subjective evaluation of its customers are not the same. The study further found that the hotel’s indoor environment plays a key role in influencing the subjective evaluation of customers. In particular, the five aspects of acoustic, light, thermal, air quality, and non-light visual factors have a great impact on the comprehensive psychological and physiological impact of the occupants, thus affecting the subjective evaluation of the hotel by customers.

4.2. Comparison of Similar Studies

At present, many studies on hotel customer satisfaction have found that hotel indoor environments can have an impact on customer satisfaction by mining online review texts [20,47,48].

Through this research, we deeply explored the influence of the hotel indoor environment on customers’ subjective evaluation and found that the hotel indoor environment has a positive impact on customers’ subjective evaluation. The test shows that all the hypotheses H1–H9 have passed the t-test, and the path coefficient is significant in the confidence level α = 0.001 level, which further verifies the significant influence of the hotel indoor environment on customers’ subjective evaluation, which is consistent with previous research conclusions.

This study uses the method of case study, selects a hotel with different decoration styles as the research object, and collects the subjective evaluation data of customers through questionnaires. The case study method can provide a real environment for us to collect relevant data. Based on the real environment, we can explore our research problems more deeply. However, the case study should also consider the particularity of the selected case hotel. Recently, some studies have selected specific hotels as research objects to explore issues related to customer satisfaction, such as selecting international hotels in Pyongyang to explore customer satisfaction under the condition of limited choice [49]. Case studies can make the problem more in-depth, but there are still limitations in case selection and conclusion promotion. In future research, multiple case hotels can be selected for the investigation to increase the universality of the research conclusions [26]. In addition, in terms of exploring customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel, many studies have adopted the method of online review analysis, which can make up for the lack of representativeness of case study data to a certain extent.

4.3. Significance

Modern people spend most of their time working and living indoors [21], and customers’ perception of the overall value of the hotel is mostly derived from the status quo of the hotel’s indoor environment. To improve the driving factors of customer satisfaction and thus improve the subjective evaluation of customers for the hotel, the major decoration styles of the hotel should ensure that the acoustic, light, thermal, air quality, and non-light visual factors of the indoor environment are higher than the hotel standards. For modern simple style rooms, more attention should be paid to their light and non-light visual factors. The British pastoral-style rooms should pay more attention to the influence of light environment, air quality, and non-light visual factors; the modern Japanese-style rooms should focus on creating their light, heat, and non-light visual environment. In addition, the individual needs of customers cannot be ignored, to provide customers with personalized services.

4.4. Limitations and Future Work

This study investigates the customer satisfaction evaluation of the indoor environment quality of Shiyu Hotel in Guangdong Province, adopting the method of text analysis combined with questionnaires. However, there are still shortcomings in this study that need to be improved.

The object of this study (Shi Yu Hotel) has seven major decoration styles, including modern simple, industrial, Japanese, and pastoral. However, to control the decoration style as the only variable, the hotel room type is finally reduced to three mainstream decoration styles: modern simple, British pastoral, and modern Japanese. The research results cannot fully represent various decoration styles of hotel room types.

Among the samples used for data analysis in this questionnaire survey, due to the different preferences of customers’ hotel room styles, there is a large difference in the number of samples collected for the three hotel room styles in this study. This problem will also have a certain impact on the data analysis results to a certain extent.

This survey mainly focuses on the acoustic, light, thermal, air quality, and non-light visual factors stipulated by IEQ. It is a shortcoming of this study not to consider the subdivided influencing factors such as material type, texture, color, pattern, decorative element, and plant form in non-optical visual factors.

In future research, it is possible to expand the research on different hotels, room types with different decoration styles, and groups of different ages and occupations, so that the conclusion can more comprehensively determine the factors of different decoration styles and different hotels that affect the subjective evaluation of different guests and the importance of different factors affecting the subjective evaluation of guests in different hotel decoration styles. To establish the subjective evaluation system of the hotel indoor environment suitable for the hotel’s multi-decoration style room type and expand the scope of application of the research conclusions, and can deeply study the impact of the subdivision factors of these five major influencing factors on the subjective evaluation of guests.

5. Conclusions and Suggestions

5.1. Conclusions

This research combines the text analysis method and questionnaire survey method, using KH Coder and SPSS to process and analyze the data. It also studies the influence of hotel indoor environment on customers’ subjective evaluation, and draws the following conclusions:

(a)

The light environment and non-light visual factors in the indoor environment of different decoration styles of the hotel are the key factors affecting the subjective evaluation of customers’ indoor environment, and their impact is the largest and most obvious.

The light environment and non-light visual factors have a great influence on the subjective evaluation of customers in each decoration style room type, and the average satisfaction score is high, indicating that the respondents are relatively satisfied with the light conditions and non-light visual conditions of the Shiyu Hotel in Guangdong Province, which should continue.

(b)

For the hotel’s modern simple style room type’s indoor environment, the light environment and non-light visual factors have a greater impact on the subjective evaluation of customers and are the most important.

From the hypothesis test t-values of H6a and H6b, 1.232 and −3.132, and the two-tailed probability p-values of the t-test are 0.219 and 0.315, respectively, which are greater than 0.05 of the significance level α. From the results of the hypothesis, it can be seen that the light environment and non-light visual factors are the main factors affecting the customer’s satisfaction rating of the hotel’s modern simple style room type. In addition, from the result data in Figure 9, it can be further verified that the light environment and non-light visual factors have an important influence on the customer satisfaction score of the hotel’s modern simple style room type, and the non-light visual factors have an influence of up to 40%.

(c)

Light environment, air quality, and non-light visual factors play a central role in the subjective evaluation of the indoor environment of the British pastoral style room type, and have a greater impact on it.

For the British pastoral style room type, it can be concluded from the test results in Table 7 that the assumptions H7a and H7b are established, that is, the light environment and air quality have a greater impact on customer satisfaction with the hotel British pastoral style room type. From Figure 9, visibly light environment and air quality have an important impact on customer satisfaction with the British pastoral style of the hotel, which is as high as 60% and 33.7%, respectively. At the same time, from Figure 9, it can be concluded that non-light visual factors have a great influence on the score of British pastoral-style room type, reaching 31%, which is consistent with the existing research results.

(d)

The hotel’s modern Japanese-style room type is significantly affected by the light environment, thermal environment, and non-light visual factors. This decoration style is also the most sensitive to light, heat, and non-light visual factors.

From the test result data in Table 7, it can be concluded that the H8a and H8b hypotheses are true, that is, the light environment and thermal environment are the most sensitive factors in the customer’s satisfaction score for the hotel’s modern Japanese-style room type, which are the most sensitive factors affecting the score. At the same time, from the result data in Figure 9, it can be further verified that the light environment and thermal environment have an important influence on the customer satisfaction score of the hotel’s modern Japanese-style room type, and the thermal environment influence is as high as 37.7%. However, for modern Japanese-style hotels, there is no cliff-like distinction between the influences of various factors, but compared with other factors, the light and thermal environment have a greater impact on the subjective ratings of modern Japanese-style hotel customers to a certain extent.

(e)

To sum up, the factors included in the five IEQ theories of indoor acoustic, light, thermal, air quality, and non-light visual factors have the greatest impact on customers’ subjective evaluation of the hotel’s indoor environment.

On the whole, the observed value of each F statistic in the results of single factor ANOVA is greater than 1, and the corresponding probability p-values is approximately 0. It is believed that the different levels of influencing factors have a significant impact on the score of each decoration style hotel. Additionally, the p-values of the results of hypothesis testing H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5 are 0.974, 0.219, 0.475, 0.100, and 0.202, respectively. The path coefficient supports the hypothesis at the level of confidence α = 0.005; it is further demonstrated that the hotel studied in this paper is established. The five dimensions of the indoor environment are the main factors that affect the subjective evaluation of customers.

The research further shows that among the five factors that affect the subjective evaluation of customers, the importance of each factor is ranked as follows: light and non-light visual factors are the most important, followed by thermal environment, air quality, and finally the acoustic environment.

5.2. Suggestions

On this basis, we put forward the following suggestions to the hotel: each type of decoration style of the hotel should ensure that the acoustic, light, thermal, air quality, and non-light visual factors of the indoor environment are all higher than the hotel standard; for modern simple style rooms, more attention should be paid to the influence of light and non-light visual factors; the British pastoral-style rooms should pay more attention to the influence of light environment, air quality and non-light visual factors; the modern Japanese-style rooms should focus on creating its light, thermal and non-light visual environment. In addition, the individual needs of customers cannot be ignored, to provide customers with personalized services.

➀ Modern simple style hotels should strengthen lighting design and space design.

Light environment and non-light visual factors are the most important factors in the subjective evaluation of modern simple style hotels; for modern simple style hotels, high-quality lighting design can create a comfortable lighting environment and meet people’s visual needs. In the process of lighting design, especially with the continuous development of LED technology, LED lighting products continue to emerge. The modern simple style hotels’ lighting design can use more LED lighting products to improve the quality of the light environment and meet the health, energy saving, and cost reduction. In addition, modern simple style hotels can improve the quality of non-light visual elements of hotels by arranging vegetation that complements each other, focusing on decoration color matching, and matching furniture with high decorative texture.

➁ British pastoral-style hotels should strengthen the HVAC system.

The above conclusions show that the light environment, air quality, and non-light visual factors play a central role in the subjective evaluation of the British pastoral-style hotel, and have a greater impact; in addition to improving the lighting design space design, indoor air quality deserves attention, it is a very complex indicator, various time-dependent physical and chemical parameters are components of indoor air quality, which are in turn affected by outdoor conditions (climate), building conditions (materials, structure, and construction), the hotel’s HVAC system (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems), interior space arrangement (furniture, furniture, equipment), and the impact of occupant productivity patterns [50]. At this stage, many hotels have not done a good job of building ventilation to save costs. The indoor ventilation is completely carried out by air conditioners. The occupants often smell a musty smell when they enter the room, which will not only affect the occupancy experience of the occupants and the subjective evaluation of the straight line. It will also cause hidden dangers to the health of the guests. For the British pastoral style, it is very important to strengthen the HVAC system of the hotel: let the indoor air quality meet the standard, improve the occupant’s check-in experience, strengthen the health protection, and finally maximize the subjective evaluation of the occupants

➂ Modern Japanese-style hotels should improve heat and humidity treatment capabilities.

Through investigation, it is found that hotel guests are very sensitive to the thermal environment in modern Japanese-style hotels; therefore, for modern Japanese-style hotels: how to dehumidify and maintain the ideal thermal environment of the hotel is very important, such as ventilation and dehumidification, heating and dehumidification, Dew point dehumidification, rotary dehumidification, membrane dehumidification, solution dehumidification, and other common dehumidification methods.