Abstract

This study aims to understand students’ perceptions of the spatial characteristics of school libraries when they use them for reading. We selected a set of spatial characteristics by reviewing the literature and conducting a preliminary investigation. Then, we examined how students perceived the importance of and how satisfied they were with each characteristic. In addition, we investigated how students’ perceptions differ by the library uses and reading-related activities. We also studied whether the satisfaction of school library users affects their continued use of the libraries. We also verified whether school library user satisfaction is an intervening variable in continued-use intention, which is affected by spatial characteristics perception. We conducted a survey of 342 students from four middle schools. The analysis of the survey outcomes shows differences in library use due to spatial characteristics such as convenience, communicability, diversity, and safety. Factors such as communicability, comfortability, and ambience affected user satisfaction positively. Both aesthetics and communicability also positively influenced the continued-use intention. Furthermore, we identified that communicability, comfortability, and ambience eventually impacted the continued-use intention via user satisfaction, an intervening variable. The significance of this study is that it considered the direction of the school library to support students’ reading by regarding the school library as a space for reading.