An Evaluation of Apartment Managers' Satisfaction regarding Landscape Management in Apartment Complexes

This study aims to find out methods to more efficiently maintain and manage landscape areas within apartment complexes by analyzing various factors related to landscape management and managers' perception. The following results were obtained. First, 50.3% of the surveyed apartment complexes performed own landscaping, while 25.2% hired landscaping services partially, which indicates that apartment management offices maintained facilities by themselves or partially hired landscaping companies due to a shortage of funds. Second, among apartments that perform own landscaping, 37.5% of them were built more than 20 years ago, while 34.3% of apartment complexes that were built less than 5 years ago were found to hire professional management. Regarding the total number of households, 34.7% of those that perform own landscaping had less than 300 households, while 48.6% of those that hire full landscaping had more than 2,000 households. Third, regarding landscaping cost, 63.9% of those that perform own landscaping spent less than 20 KRW per square meter, while 28.6% of those that hire full landscaping spent less than 20 KRW per square meter and 25.7% spent less than 50 KRW per square meter, showing that the management cost was higher in the apartments hiring full landscaping. Fourth, work types also showed differences between landscape management types. Only 50.9% of self landscaping apartment complexes were found to regularly trim trees, while 91.4% of apartments that hire full landscaping services performed the same tasks, keeping trees healthy and visibly more appealing. Fifth, the apartments hiring full landscaping showed a higher level of work satisfaction (3.46) than those performing own landscaping (2.67). Sixth, on the matter of the level of satisfaction depending on the type of work, most items showed a statistically significance in apartments hiring full landscaping (3.11-3.43 on average), compared to apartments performing own landscaping (2.4-2.9 on average). Apartment managers showed a relatively higher satisfaction level in landscape management by hiring professional landscaping services.