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This study aims to explore aesthetic atmospheres and their affordances in urban squares to advance knowledge on the research and design of attractive living environments.

Descriptions of pleasant and unpleasant experiences of urban squares were collected using qualitative questionnaires with open-ended questions. The theoretical framework and the lens of aesthetic affordances were applied to pinpoint and understand the connections between the place attributes and experiences.

This study found four distinct aesthetic atmospheres formed by perceived synergies of both the material and immaterial aspects of the environment. It was also found that the atmospheres may shift. A model that shows the aesthetic atmospheres and their potential affordances as layered and emerging is presented.

Everyday aesthetics considered as affordances open new research perspectives for the understanding of what generates attractive living environments – or not.

Aesthetics affordances may provide the design professionals and alike means on how to design places that engender specific aesthetic atmosphere.

Gathering and discussing commonplace aesthetic experiences in everyday life may enhance democratic participation in place development among people with different levels of design expertise.

This study combines theories of place with a novel concept of aesthetic affordances to identify distinct aesthetic atmospheres. A holistic overview structure of how the various constituents of aesthetic atmospheres relate to each other provides new ways of studying and understanding urban aesthetic atmospheres.

This study explores whether religion plays an important role in corporate poverty alleviation. Religious atmosphere affects managers' attitude towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) and then influences corporate poverty alleviation. This study first examines the impact of religious atmosphere on corporate poverty alleviation and then investigates whether formal institutions, such as law enforcement environments and ownership, influence the relationship between religious atmosphere and corporate poverty alleviation behavior.

In 2016, the Chinese government initiated a nationwide campaign aiming to eliminate poverty in China by 2020. The authors conduct empirical tests with data on Chinese listed firms from 2016 to 2020. The religious atmosphere is measured by the number of Buddhist monasteries and Taoist temples within a certain radius around Chinese listed firms' registered addresses. The authors adopt the ordinary least squares (OLS) method for regression and take the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method to address the endogeneity issue.

The results show a positive relationship between religious atmosphere and corporate poverty alleviation donations. Law enforcement attenuates the positive association between the religious atmosphere and corporate poverty alleviation donations. Religion and corporate poverty alleviation donations have a more positive association for non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) than for state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The authors' findings have important implications. First, this study inspires incorporating the ethical value of traditional culture, such as religion, into CSR. Second, the findings imply that informal institutions have a greater impact on corporate decision-making when formal institutions are weak, suggesting that informal institutions should be emphasized when promoting CSR in countries where formal institutions are relatively weak. The study investigates only religious influence on corporate poverty alleviation based on Buddhism and Taoism, but the authors do not examine the impacts of other religions. Future research may examine the relationships between other religions and corporate poverty alleviation in China.

This study illustrates the positive role played by religion in promoting CSR by relating religious atmosphere to corporate poverty alleviation. It fills the research gap between religion and CSR and also contributes to the literature on determinants of corporate poverty alleviation.

This study aims to create actionable guidelines for pricing decision-making by employing game a theory matrix to forecast the correlation between the average daily rate and the latest ambiance of hotels.

Utilizing a vector error correction model, the research employs game theory to assess the influence of the average daily rate on the hotel's newest atmosphere during both peak season (April–September) and valley season (October–March).

Findings indicate that during the peak season, when the average daily rate rises in resorts and falls in suburban areas, the hotel’s newest atmosphere is at its best in both types of accommodations. During the off-peak season, the hotel’s newest atmosphere is achieved when both resorts and suburban accommodations increase their average daily rates.

There are two study constraints. One is the assumption that hotel guests in both parties prefer not to change hotels, but in fact they would. Two is a limited sample of two resort and suburban markets.

This suggests that the hotel’s newest atmosphere can draw both leisure and business travelers to suburban areas during the low season and more leisure travelers to resorts during the high season.

The study’s findings have implications for revenue related to the hotel’s newest atmosphere and cleanliness for both suburban and resort hotels, particularly when promoting tourism collaboratively.

The study provides valuable insights for hotel managers in analyzing pricing strategies using matrices.

Quality in foodservices has become essential, and new methodological ways of determining service quality enable a better representation of service processes and help to increase revisits. This paper focuses on the foodservice context and explores the relationship between staff-related service dimensions, atmosphere, food quality and revisit in a full-service setting.

This study combines an often neglected mystery guest approach with partial least square–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to shed more light on customers' service perceptions. The mystery guest approach has been updated with a digitally supported smartphone questionnaire (e-mystery) that provides more reliable results since previous measurements experienced difficulties of feasibility in time-limited settings (N = 247).

The findings of this study confirm the direct effects of the service quality dimensions reliability, attentiveness and atmosphere on revisit intention and highlight the mediating role of food quality. In detail, the findings showed significant results for service employees' reliability and attentiveness and underlined the role of atmosphere for revisit intention.

The contribution of this paper supplements that mystery guest approaches represent a reliable alternative to convenience sampling, especially in combination with a digitally supported questionnaire (e-mystery). Thereby, this paper suggests the further application of e-mystery for the hospitality and tourism industry. In terms of implications, this study highlights the importance of securing food quality by fostering specialized schools and training programs for career starters. Since the findings stress the importance of service quality and atmosphere, managers need to ensure that employees are trained in culturally sensitive communication and services to excel in service-related dimensions.

As Chinese Generation Z consumers have distrust over traditional advertising and marketing, this study focuses on user-generated content (UGC) travel apps to demonstrate the structural relationship among the expertise of amateur information publisher, interactive atmosphere, information quality, expectation confirmation, perceived trust, experiential satisfaction and switching intention.

This study carried out a questionnaire-based survey among Chinese Generation Z consumers and obtained 356 valid questionnaire copies that were analyzed with the structural equation.

The expertise of amateur information publisher and the interactive atmosphere of UGC travel apps have positive effects on perceived trust; expectation confirmation and perceived trust have positive effects on experiential satisfaction, and experiential satisfaction has negative effects on switching intention.

The results should encourage UGC travel app developers to use visual effects so as to achieve a higher quality of information, foster a cordial interactive atmosphere and enhance the expertise of information publishers by selecting the best candidate, thus spurring the design of marketing activities popular among the Chinese Generation Z consumers.

This study argues that new-generation consumers have their specific appeals and in the tourist market. It explores the UGC travel apps, which are popular among Generation Z consumers in order to deepen marketing personnel's understanding of the relationship among the expertise of amateur information publisher, interactive atmosphere, information quality, expectation confirmation, perceived trust, experiential satisfaction and switching intention.

The purpose of this study is to discover what attributes of casino buffet restaurants are the most important for customers’ willingness to pay (WTP).

Choice-based conjoint analysis was used in this study to test seven attributes: food, price/value, real price, service, atmosphere, the number of reviews and user-generated star ratings. Sawtooth Software was used to do the conjoint analysis, and a series of significance t-tests were run to determine the significance of each attribute on WTP with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

Based on a survey of 483 respondents who had visited a buffet at a casino within the last two years, this study found that food is ranked as the most significant attribute of a casino buffet restaurant, followed by real price and service quality.

Theoretically, this work is the first to the authors’ knowledge to apply the antecedents of behavioral intention to willingness-to-pay for niche restaurants. Practically, the results of this study will help casino buffet operators as they re-open after COVID-19. Future studies could collect data in the post-pandemic environment and examine WTP at casino buffets in different geographic locations.

This study aims to examine the linkages between port aesthetics, destination image, tourist satisfaction and tourist loyalty in Hong Kong.

To achieve this objective, the authors surveyed 247 tourists in Hong Kong. Using factor analysis and structural equation model (SEM) to identify the constructs of port aesthetics and analyze its relationship with destination image, tourist satisfaction and tourist loyalty.

Five-port aesthetics constructs were identified, namely, leisure and culture, design and cognition, atmosphere, recreational facilities and memory. The results of SEM revealed the following: port aesthetics positively influenced destination image; destination image positively influenced tourist satisfaction; and tourist satisfaction had a positive influence on tourist loyalty. This research also found that the indirect effect of port aesthetics on tourist loyalty via destination image and tourist satisfaction.

While the environmental qualities of a port could potentially affect destination image, tourist satisfaction and loyalty, this study developed and validated a measurement instrument of perceived port aesthetics from a tourist’s perspective. Specifically, this research proposed a structural model to explain the relationships between port aesthetics, destination image, tourist satisfaction and loyalty.

The article contributes to affective ethnography focussing on the fluidity of organizational spacing. Through the concept of affective space, it highlights those elements that are ephemeral and elusive – like affect, aesthetics, atmosphere, intensity, moods – and proposes to explore affect as spatialized and space as affective.

Fluidity is proposed as a conceptual lens that sits at the conjunction of space and affect, highlighting both the movement in time and space, and the mutable relationships that the capacity of affecting and being affected weaves. It experiments with “writing differently” in affective ethnography, thus performing the space of representation of affective space.

The article enriches the alternative to a conceptualization of organizations as stable entities, considering organizing in its spatial fluidity and in being a fragmented, affective and dispersed phenomenon.

The article's writing is an example of intertextuality constructed through five praxiographic stories that illustrate the multiple fluidity of affective spacing in terms of temporal fluidity, fluidity of boundaries, of participation, of the object of practice, and atmospheric fluidity.

This study aims to focus on the development of an experimental setup for testing tribological pairings under a gas atmosphere at pressures up to 10 bar.

A pressure chamber allowing oscillating movement through an outer shaft was constructed and mounted on an oscillating tribometer. Due to a metal spring bellows system, a methodology for the evaluation of the coefficient of friction values separately from the spring forces was developed.

The selected material concept was qualitatively and quantitatively assessed. An evaluation of the static and the dynamic coefficient of friction was performed, which was crucial for the understanding of the adhesion effects of the tested material pairing. The amount of information that is lost due to averaging the measured friction values is higher than one would expect.

The developed experimental setup is unique and, compared with the existing tribometers for testing under gas ambient pressures, allows testing under contact conditions that are closer to real applications, such as compressors and expanders. An in-depth observation of the adhesion and stick–slip effects of the tested material pairings is possible as well.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-06-2023-0173/