FURNITURE IN SERVICE AND INSTITUTIONAL SPACES: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW (2015-2025)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55197/qjssh.v7i2.1163Keywords:
systematic review, servicescape, physical environment, furniture, seatingAbstract
This study reviews research on space and furniture, focusing on service settings such as restaurants and cafes, to incorporate relevant background into the examination of the furniture-space relationship. According to the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, literature is obtained from Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus and EBSCOhost, and only English journal articles published from 2015 to 2025 are included. After deduplication, the titles, abstracts and full texts are screened in stages, and finally 28 studies are included and numbered from S01 to S28 to ensure traceability. The results show that there are concentrated research situations in the medical care field (32.1%) and commercial service scenarios (25%), the education and learning environment accounts for 17.9%, and the distribution in residential, workplace, wine, rural, and judicial scenarios is less. The seat furniture belongs to the main category, accounting for 67.9%, of which most are used for tables and desks, accounting for 50.0%, indicating that the seat-space relationship in space research often relies on the sitting posture and the coordination of the seat surface to be reflected. In terms of methodology, quantitative empirical research dominates, accounting for 60.7%; qualitative research, 21.4%; case studies, 10.7%; and mixed-methods design, 7.1% as an auxiliary. In cross-mapping, the distribution of seats in various scenarios is relatively extensive. Most other furniture types are clustered by scenario, and the functional scope of medical and care environments is the broadest. This review will build a replicable baseline by treating furniture as an element of spatial research and analysis, expects more consistent furniture-level operationalization, and needs to pay attention to experience aspects, such as aesthetics and emotions, that have not been fully studied.
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