Search results

This paper aims to introduce the concept of biomorphism (i.e. indirect experience of nature) in servicescape designs and validates its impact on consumer responses. Using the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework, this study explores the relationship between biomorphic servicescape designs and the servicescape preference. Further, it explains how biomorphic designs can help users to get better connected with the servicescapes by introducing the mediating role of attention restoration and place identity (emotional and cognitive), as explained by attention restoration theory.

Two empirical studies were carried out to test the hypothesised relationships: an exploratory pre-experimental design with one-shot treatment using 200 images as stimuli and 3,680 responses; and a 3 × 2 factorial design with three-dimensional images with about 654 responses for three service contexts chosen a priori: fashion retail, restaurant and hospital lobby.

This study conceptualises the role of biomorphism – elements that mimic natural forms – in servicescape designs and establishes that, akin to natural elements, the indirect experience of nature in servicescapes also has a positive influence on attention restoration, perceived place identity and servicescape preference of the consumers. This implies that the effects similar to that of a biophilic servicescape can be achieved through servicescape elements that mimic natural forms.

Extending the idea of biophilia, this research adopts the concept of biomorphism from architecture and environmental psychology domains and introduces biomorphic servicescape designs, which could be more practical at times compared to biophilic servicescapes. It establishes the influences of biomorphic servicescape designs on consumer preferences. Grounded in the S-O-R model, it further explains this relationship through mediating effects of attention restoration and place identity. Being new to marketing and management domains, this research may trigger a series of research studies on biomorphic service environment designs, with desirable implications for services marketing and services operations functions.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce restorative servicescapes. The work demonstrates that younger‐aged consumers may remedy symptoms associated with directed attention fatigue, including adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), by patronizing third places, such as video arcades and coffee shops.

This paper evaluates a servicescape's restorative potential by drawing on established measures. Attention restoration theory (ART) has been explored in natural and environmental psychology, rather than marketing. The first study uses survey methodology to explore whether teenagers who patronize a video arcade sense its restorative potential. The second study uses survey methodology to explore the relationship between patronizing a restorative third place and being at risk for ADHD.

Study 1 reveals that video arcade patrons sense the arcade's restorative potential. Therefore, commercial servicescapes may possess restorative qualities. Study 2 reveals that college‐aged students, who patronize a restorative servicescape, are significantly less likely than other students to be at risk for experiencing ADHD.

Although the data reveal a relationship between restorative servicescapes and ADHD risk, a diagnosis is not obtained. Furthermore, because survey methodology is employed, the causal influence of restorative servicescapes cannot be evaluated on their customers' health. However, commercial servicescapes can mimic the restorative properties found in nature. Thus, the health potential of public places on health may be profound.

Educational institutions, governmental agencies, and parents should consider publicly supporting third places for teenagers because doing so can remedy symptoms associated with mental fatigue.

The paper brings ART into the marketing discipline.

The purpose of this paper is to help senior center managers and service researchers understand why some patrons experience health benefits, primarily fatigue relief, through senior center day services participation.

The authors conduct two separate studies at a senior center. The first study represents a grounded theory that offers an original, basic social process regarding mental restoration in senior centers. The second study draws on Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and employs survey methodology.

Senior center patrons who perceive a center's restorative stimuli experience health benefits such as relief from four types of fatigue, enhanced quality of life, and improved physical and mental well-being.

The paper shows that senior centers may be relatively inexpensive, non-medical services that can help patrons relieve fatigue symptoms, which are often treated with pharmaceutical medication and medical visits. A limitation is the small sample size, which restricts generalizability.

The results show that senior center managers may promote patron health by fostering service designs and programs that allow members to temporarily escape from everyday life and interact in an ever-changing environment that fosters a sense of belonging.

Senior center day services help patrons relieve fatigue, and its symptoms, in an affordable, non-medical, and non-pharmaceutical manner.

The paper clarifies the role of senior centers in patrons’ lives by drawing on ART. Senior centers that can offer patrons restorative environments are likely to play a significant role in patrons’ physical, social, and mental well-being.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the biophilic stimuli present in the servicescape and restorative effects on psychological states among consumers. The research also examines moderating role of service contexts in this relationship.

This empirical study applied a laboratory-like experimental design with one-shot treatment. About 566 usable responses were collected using six photographic images – three were biophilic environments and three were non-biophilic environments – for four a priori service contexts: hospital lobby, upscale restaurants, spa and bank lobby.

The tests of hypotheses confirm restorative effects of biophilic servicescapes on consumer’s psychological states, attention and mood, which, in turn, positively influence service preference. Further, the restorative effects of natural elements are found to vary across hedonic – utilitarian and experience – credence type service contexts.

Because of higher levels of natural stressors, consumers today likely have attention fatigue and depleted mood states, which, in turn, may have adverse effects on their service consumption behaviour. In this context, building upon theories from environmental psychology, findings of this study contribute by establishing restorative potential of biophilic servicescape. The study also establishes that natural elements in biophilic servicescapes influence service preference, which is mediated by consumers’ psychological states – attention and mood. Further, it demonstrates that consumers are more responsive with regards to such restorative effects of biophilic elements in contexts where they seek emotional, experiential value compared to rational, functional value.

Have you been to a smart restaurant, and how were its services? A common limitation of hospitality studies stems from the lack of research on how service quality is shaped within smart technology. This study aims to fill this literature void not merely to reiterate the importance of technology but also to recast service quality through the lens of information technology. It synthesizes the 5-S model of smart service quality (AKA SSQ) as a new conceptualization of service quality application in smart hospitality contexts such as smart restaurants.

This study undertook a qualitative research design based on theoretical synthesis from service quality, information technology and attention restoration. Drawing from online review comments and semistructured interviews from smart restaurants, the authors improvised the SSQ model to identify the essence of smart service in smart dining establishments.

“5-S” reflects an extension of the literature to denote a new SSQ abstraction pertinent to s-servicescape, s-assurance, s-responsiveness, s-reliability and s-empathy. A nomological network was posited to better understand the importance of smart design and consequence of SSQ.

The emergence of smart dining gives rise to smart restaurants, which puts technology at center stage. As consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with self-service technology, auto-payment and ordering systems and robotic services, technology in foodservice will continue to play an essential role to better serve diners. Geared with advanced innovations and intelligent devices, smart restaurants are now more than mere eateries. It is a trend and a lifestyle.

This novel SSQ concept adds new nuances to the literature by acknowledging the technological essence in today’s hospitality industry. By integrating smart technology into the service quality paradigm, the authors are able to observe several interesting behaviors exhibited during smart dining, including tech-induced restoration, which opens a new avenue to understand how attention restoration could be attained through immersion in a technologically advanced setting. By synthesizing theoretical essence from service quality, attention restoration and information technology, the authors are able to create a new dialog that should warrant a forum of discussion in future studies.

This research paper aims to explore Airbnb’s online experience initiative, which has sparked a new wave of virtual tourism to improvise a large assortment of experiential activities through cyberspace. It works to answer questions pertinent to the type of virtual experiences tourists seek and how these experiences could fulfill tourist needs, thereby rendering favorable socio-mental outcomes through experiences encountered.

Drawing on travel experience and transformative tourism theoretical tenets, this qualitative inquiry used data collected from social media posts from virtual tourists.

Results reveal four major themes of online experiences – hedonism, attention restoration, social relatedness and self-exaltation – that encompass 12 experiential categories. They further underscore four types of transformative mechanisms pinpointing hedonic well-being, environmental-mastery well-being, social well-being and eudaimonic well-being.

Research findings demonstrate how Airbnb exercised marketing agility during severe environmental plight; while expediting strategic initiatives that offer tourists and residents alike a means to reengage in leisure and travel activities at home. They also salvage the peer-to-peer community by turning accommodation hosts into online experience ambassadors.

The contribution of this inquiry lies in assessing virtual experiences and reconnecting how different cyber experiences can meet an array of tourist needs. This study further highlights the transformative virtual experience paradigm to lay the necessary theoretical foundation for future research on virtual transformative tourism. This research goes beyond the common understanding of transformative tourism that relies merely on corporeal encounters. From a practical point of view, this study brings light to a novel concept – sharing experience economy – that incorporates the nuances between sharing economy and experience economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the positive aspects of casinos, and gambling entertainment in particular, by revealing the health potential of these commercial establishments. In doing so, this work helps explain the affinity of Chinese consumers with gambling.

The authors draw on Attention Restoration Theory to put forth a framework on the restorative potential of a casino on human health and its effects on managerial outcomes. The authors use a sample of 605 Chinese tourists in Macau and use both structural equation modeling and moderation analyses.

Tourists’ ability to sense a casino’s restorative potential is positively related to their well-being and their propensity to view Macau as a value, to spend money in Macau and to revisit Macau. Moderation analyses reveal that tourists may still perceive a casino’s restorative qualities regardless of whether they plan to engage in gambling or other activities, are winning or losing money or reside outside mainland China.

The paper links gaming studies to the transformative research paradigm and considers the possibility that some socially unacceptable services may actually be beneficial to human well-being.

The results help clarify why Chinese tourists tend to engage in casino patronage and gambling activities throughout the world.

This work discusses health benefits associated with socially unacceptable products and suggests that many “sinful services” may offer consumers transformative benefits.

The paper is one of the first to explore positive aspects of gambling and spending time in casino environments, while showing that casinos may be “healthy places” for some consumers.

Trending in modern interior design frameworks is an integration of real and simulated (i.e. photographs, murals) elements of nature into buildings, and a number of interdisciplinary studies concern the effects of nature on various aspects of human functioning. The purpose of this paper is to measure employees’ self-reported levels of affective organizational commitment (AOC), perceived productivity, well-being, attention restoration and satisfaction at work to explore how each mural is conceptualized and to make recommendations to hospital administrators and facilities managers as they make decisions concerning mural design and placement. One hospital had a biophilic mural and the other had a bold abstract mural.

The research was carried out using post-occupancy evaluation and mixed-methods survey design.

Employees in both hospitals disagreed that their organizational commitment (OC), perceived productivity or well-being at work had improved since the new murals had been installed. Responses from both hospitals were also low concerning perceptions of attention restoration. Indeed, no significant differences between hospitals were found. Correlations among scales were found within hospitals that support published studies. More correlations occurred at the hospital where employees viewed the biophilic mural (e.g. between OC and perceived productivity, and between satisfaction with the physical environment and perceived productivity). At both sites, satisfaction with the physical environment correlated with OC.

The authors expected that those working within view of the biophilic mural would report stronger ratings of AOC, perceived productivity, well-being, attention restoration and satisfaction with the workplace than employees with a view of the abstract scene. No differences between groups were found; responses to psychosocial scale items asking about whether attitudes had improved after the retrofit were low or neutral for employees in either hospital. However, more correlations between scales that support existing literature were revealed for those working near the biophilic mural. Thus, the authors recommend architectural programming before a design change to gather insight on occupants’ preferences at work.

The concept of utilising greenspace to promote and maintain mental health predates the development of almost all current treatment modalities. Although the use of greenspace as a therapeutic tool decreased throughout the 20th century, research in this area has grown exponentially over the last 20 years. This review examines the theory and increasing evidence base behind the psychological, social and physical health benefits of viewing and interacting with greenspace, and considers some of the common methodological limitations within the literature.Those who use secondary and tertiary care mental health services typically experience secondary problems due to reduced levels of social and physical activity. This review argues that the holistic benefits of greenspace make ecotherapy particularly appropriate for such a population. The review recommends that the effects of ecotherapy on those who use secondary and tertiary mental health care services be explored as part of an effort to redress the absence in the literature of quality studies in this area for this population.

This article aims to illustrate how service organizations (e.g. cancer resource centers) can create restorative servicescapes. The article addresses whether cancer patients respond favorably to a cancer center's restorative servicescape and explores the reasons they might patronize the center and interact socially with others.

This article synthesizes various streams of literature from services marketing, natural psychology, and cancer and medical research. The study defines and develops the framework's categories and advances propositions based on the framework.

The model proposes that cancer patients should respond favorably to a cancer center's restorative servicescape. By spending time in the center, people living with cancer may be able to remedy four frequently experienced, negative symptoms associated with fatigue.

The study explores a not‐for‐profit cancer resource center that offers members an array of participatory activities within a homelike environment. However, it may be difficult for traditional medical facilities to fashion restorative servicescapes.

The study helps inform medical practitioners about the psychosocial benefits cancer resource centers offer cancer patients. This article provides a discussion regarding a cancer center's development of its Connect‐to‐Care program, based on an oncologist and a cancer center representative joining together to discuss a patient's cancer diagnosis and care.

This article proposes a theoretical understanding on how the physical and restorative qualities of an environment transform human health. It links the services domain to the health sciences and suggests a means by which cancer patients can “do more with less” by combining medical treatment with cancer resource center patronage.