Discomfort Glare from Daylighting: Influence of Culture on Discomfort Glare Perception

In a context where lighting standards are developed based on glare indices, no study has ever investigated that these indices could be used analogously for subjects having different cultures and living in different climates. The wide variability existing between individuals’ discomfort glare perceptions suggests, however, that some of the factors influencing discomfort glare perception are still unknown, and culture might be one of them. This paper aims to determine the existence of differences between the discomfort glare perceptions of Belgians and Chileans. A field study was conducted in Chile and Belgium, for which a total of 288 measures of the lighting environments and subjective glare assessments were collected. Statistical analyses of the Belgian and Chilean datasets showed that Chileans perceive discomfort glare differently than Belgians. It is therefore hypothesised that existing discomfort glare indices might not be suited for Chilean subjects accustomed to a different type of lighting environment.