Sequential environmental control and perceived comfort in virtual post-occupancy evaluation of educational spaces

Purpose Comfort discrepancies frequently persist in operational educational buildings despite compliance with indoor environmental quality (IEQ) standards. This study examines how perceived comfort evolves across sequential environmental configurations in immersive virtual reality (VR) when limited environmental control is introduced and subsequently withdrawn. Design/methodology/approach A repeated-measures experiment was conducted with 81 university students performing an identical spatial task across three conditions within the same virtual classroom: baseline, user-choice (selection of one IEQ dimension: sound, thermal, or lighting), and programmed reversion to baseline. Overall perceived comfort was assessed after each exposure. Findings Comfort increased significantly following the introduction of user choice, and no statistically significant decline was observed after reversion to baseline. The magnitude of improvement did not differ across IEQ dimensions. Perceived environmental control was positively associated with the comfort level during the user-choice condition but was not related to the magnitude of comfort change. Research limitations/implications Short exposure duration and reliance on subjective measures limit conclusions regarding long-term adaptation, physiological response, and the extent to which observed effects reflect short-term appraisal rather than sustained comfort. Practical implications VR-based sequential evaluation may support exploratory comfort assessment in shared educational buildings by allowing individualized environmental options to be tested before physical modification. Originality/value The study conceptualizes comfort as a temporally structured experience rather than a static response, introducing a sequential immersive design to examine how constrained environmental choice and short-term experiential context shape comfort appraisal in post-occupancy evaluation.