Residential Configuration and Dormitory Culture Formation: A Quantitative Analysis of How Gender Composition and Spatial Design Influence Residents' Cooperative Attitudes in University Housing

This study examined how different gender compositions (male-only, female-only, and co-ed dormitories) and spatial designs (same-floor co-ed and floor-separated co-ed) across four buildings in the H village student dormitory at Keio University influenced residents’ cooperative attitudes and values. A longitudinal survey was conducted five times between May and November 2025, and data from 153 domestic students were analyzed. The cultural influence of buildings was estimated using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) derived from linear mixed-effects models. The overall ICC was 0.075 (95% CI: [0.000, 0.258]), indicating that approximately 7.5% of response variance was explained by building differences. For “willingness to participate in dormitory events,” ICC reached 0.279 (p<0.001). Analysis of cultural similarity among new residents in co-ed buildings revealed no significant difference between similarity to same-sex seniors (95.1%) and opposite-sex seniors (95.7%; p = 0.160). However, co-ed buildings showed significantly lower event participation willingness compared to single-sex buildings (p<0.05).