User preferences for coworking spaces; a comparison between the Netherlands, Germany and the Czech Republic
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User preferences for coworking spaces; a comparison between the Netherlands, Germany and the Czech Republic Rianne Appel‑Meulenbroek1 · Minou Weijs‑Perrée1 · Marko Orel2 · Felix Gauger3 · Andreas Pfnür3 Received: 11 May 2020 / Accepted: 5 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Coworking spaces have become a central component of new work environments, with large international chains. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether user preferences for the physical workspace design are consistent across countries, which the uniformity of such chains seems to suggest. A comparison between the user preferences of coworking spaces between the Netherlands (n = 219), Germany (n = 98) and the Czech Republic (n = 79) is performed using a mixed multinomial logic model for each country. Besides statistical utility of attributes, also motivations for working in coworking spaces are analysed. The findings show that there are some consistencies in preferences across countries. Typical real estate characteristics like accessibility and contract options came forward to be the most important attributes in choosing which coworking space to work at in all three countries. However, significant differences in the desired quality levels of specifically these attributes were found between the countries as well, and only the less important attributes showed similar preferences internationally. This suggests that identical world-wide implementations of the same concept, might serve multi-nationals but possibly will not attract local users. The identified differences in preferences can help to position more specific, dedicated coworking spaces within local markets. Keywords Coworking spaces · MMNL · User preferences · Space attributes · Workplace JEL Classification D16 · M14 · O52 · O57 · R30 · P25
* Rianne Appel‑Meulenbroek [email protected] 1
Urban Systems & Real Estate, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
2
University of Economics in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
3
Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
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1 Introduction For the last two decades, work practices have changed due to the collaborative economy and new forms of collaboration (Mitev et al. 2019). One of the consequences is the continuing rise of coworking spaces. While the contemporary versions of these collaborative and shared workplaces started to gain visibility around the year 2005 in San Francisco (The Spiral Muse) and London (The Hub) (Merkel 2015; Waters-Lynch et al. 2016), their existence can be tracked to the mid-90 s (Orel and Dvouletý 2020). Nonetheless, Deskmag’s yearly global coworking survey (Deskmag 2018) showed that 29% of all coworking spaces available in 2018 were opened over the last year. Up until 2022, the number of coworking spaces is expected to grow at an annual rate of 6% in the U.S. and 13% elsewhere (pre-Covid-19 expectations). This new model of working alone-together (Spinuzzi 2012) is not only elusive to practitioners but als
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