The influence mechanism of daylight visual evaluation in college classrooms under visual field physiological characteristics of student group: Case study

Continuously low-quality daylight environment in the classroom may cause deviation in the student group's visual field physiological characteristics. This study presents college students' visual physiological group characteristics of college students and the influence mechanisms of subjective visual perception under daylighting in the classroom. Seven experimental parameters-including the desktop illuminance, blackboard illuminance, distance between human eye and exterior wall, vertical eye illuminance, daylight glare probability (DGP), mean light sensitivity (MS), and pattern standard deviation (PSD) that impacted subjective visual perception–along with six distinct classroom daylight conditions (six seats in two classrooms) were determined. This study demonstrates that Chinese college students are associated with the visual physiological group characteristics of low MS and high PSD by the visual field test, and PSD has significant differences between genders. It also validates that MS and PSD have significant effects on the subjective visual perception of daylight. The visual comfort and apparent brightness models were constructed under three typical behavior modes: desktop reading, blackboard reading, and changing-over (sight switching between the blackboard and the desktop). In conclusion, the subjective visual perceptions showed an internal consistency of change trend under different behavior modes. The cumulative weights (normalized path coefficients in the structural equation) of visual field physiological group characteristics on the visual comfort under three typical behavior modes are 15.80%, 15.53%, and 19.86%, and the cumulative weights on the apparent brightness are 4.15%, 0%, and 7.58%, respectively. This study provides guidelines for the future human-based daylighting design of college classrooms.