A Multi-Stakeholder Delphi Study to Determine Key Space Management Components for Elderly Facilities in China

The elderly population in China is increasing rapidly. To meet elderly residents’ housing demand, Chinese government makes great efforts to build more elderly facilities. However, major challenges in the operation of these elderly facilities, such as low space utilization rate, poor accessibility, poor environment and so on, have being emerging. The critical reason for challenges can be concluded as the lack of effective space management components. Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to explore key space management components for China’s elderly facilities. Considering stakeholders’ (facility owner, facility manager, care staff, elderly residents, and academic researchers) viewpoints on space management, this study used a multi-stakeholder Delphi approach to determine key space management components through five steps. Based on the selection criteria, a total of 25 Delphi panellists with five stakeholder groups were invited and finally 23 Delphi panellists participated in the whole study process. Subsequently, the academic researchers among these panellists were employed to quantify the stakeholders’ influence with the parameter of stakeholder influencing factor. After that, the initial discussion on space management was performed to generate the initial list involving 11 space management components. Next, two ranking rounds were conducted to conclude the final significance scores of each space management component from five stakeholder groups’ feedbacks. With respect to the final ranking score and the values of influencing stakeholder factor, the decision score of each space management components was calculated, which integrated all stakeholder groups’ opinions. Finally, through two cut-off points, a total of seven components were selected as the key space management components for China’s elderly facilities including space planning and assignment, space utilization audit, space occupancy cost audit, space inventory management, space usability management, space change management, and the management of health safety and environment. These components will assist facility managers to conduct effective and sustainable space management practice for supporting organizational core business.