Quality of Life and Digital Transformation in a Thai University: A Smart Campus Perspective

Abstract

Quality of Life (QoL) in digitally transformed institutions is often discussed in terms of technological efficiency, yet it is experienced through everyday interactions with spaces, environments, and organizational practices. University campuses provide a compelling context for examining this tension, as smart buildings, environmental management, security systems, and energy practices increasingly shape daily academic and social life. This study investigates how Quality of Life is perceived within a smart campus at a public university in Thailand, focusing on the institutional conditions through which digital transformation is lived and interpreted. Survey data were collected from 547 members of the university community using a structured questionnaire. Quality of Life was conceptualized as a higher-order construct reflected by five interrelated dimensions: Smart Building, Smart Environment, Smart People, Smart Security, and Smart Energy. A second-order confirmatory factor analysis was employed to examine the structure of these dimensions and their collective contribution to perceived Quality of Life. The model demonstrates good fit to the data (CFI = 0.954, TLI = 0.950, RMSEA = 0.049). All dimensions contribute significantly to Quality of Life, with Smart Environment showing the strongest association (standardized loading = 0.95), followed by Smart Building (0.84). These findings suggest that Quality of Life in smart campuses emerges less from isolated technologies than from the ways institutional spaces and environmental conditions are experienced in everyday life, highlighting the social and cultural dimensions of smart campus development.