THE USER PREFERENCE OF COWORKING SPACE ATTRIBUTES BASED ON DIFFERENT SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHICS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Fuelled by the rapid development of technology and the rising of gig economy, coworking spaces quickly emerged to be a popular choice of independent workers. It is because such spaces not only offer users with flexible contracts and high affordability but also provide them with a community, separation of work and life as well as network opportunities. The momentum of working remotely is expected to continue, coworking spaces are set to expand further in the future. As both demand and supply increase, it is critical to reduce the mismatch between the two. While the concept of coworking space has been covered widely by media, but very little academic literature about it can be found. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the preference of different user groups on the attributes of the coworking space in Singapore. This exploratory research paper has 3 objectives: (1) To Identify the attributes of coworking space (2) To Identify different groups of coworking space users based on diverse socio-demographic characteristics and their motivations (3) To understand the relationship between user groups and the attributes of coworking space. In order to achieve the objectives progressively, there are 4 research questions were asked: 1. What are the common attributes of coworking space? 2. What are the common motivations (reasons) for using a coworking space? 3. What are the socio-demographic characteristics of coworking space users in Singapore? 4. What is the preference of different user groups on the attributes of coworking space in Singapore? The study found that the common attributes are layout, types of space supply, atmosphere and interior design, event frequency, contract flexibility and tenant diversity. It could also be identified that the top motivation of co-workers is affordability. In addition, the dominant coworking space users are from tech and consultancy sectors. The users are relatively young with majority of them below the age of 39. Self-employed Worker, Freelancer or Entrepreneur and SME are the most common employment type. This paper also found that the preference of attributes are affected mostly by job sectors, followed by age group and gender, and lastly employment type. One of the major limitations of this study is the small sample size, it might give poor generalisability of the samples studied to the population of coworking space users.