Willingness to pay for well-being housing attributes driven by design layout: Evidence from Hong Kong

Housing design layout plays a crucial role in occupant well-being, yet existing research has not clearly understood occupants' preferences for different housing design layout attributes. This study aims to elucidate preferences by measuring demand-side willingness to pay (WTP) for housing attributes related to well-being and influenced by design layout. We first simulate the metrics of five housing attributes under different layouts, i.e., spatial daylight autonomy (sDA), spatial glare autonomy (sGA), natural ventilation effectiveness (NVE), predicted mean vote (PMV), and energy use intensity (EUI). Then, WTP for these attributes is disentangled from housing prices using the hedonic model. The findings demonstrate that a 1 % increase in sDA, sGA, and NVE corresponds to respective increases of 1.342 %, 0.694 %, and 2.842 % in housing prices, showing that residents value greatly the presence of natural ventilation and well-lit spaces with appropriate daylight. However, no significant correlations are found for PMV and EUI, suggesting a lack of a general preference towards thermal comfort or energy consumption in the Hong Kong context. This study contributes to a deeper knowledge of key well-being attributes in housing design as well as practical insights to create housing environments that prioritise occupant well-being and enhance market value. Future research should consider expanding to diverse housing markets, incorporating more well-being attributes, and examining the temporal variations of WTP.