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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.

There has been limited investigation into how “biophilic design” (i.e. the integration of nature within the built environment) can be effectively used within the workplace to facilitate the process of psychological restoration. The purpose of this study was to focus, in particular, on the effectiveness of biophilic “restoration pods” in promoting recovery from stress.

A randomised field experiment was conducted. A total of 32 employees from a participating organisation completed two tests replicating typical office work (proofreading and arithmetic) and subjective ratings of stress, anxiety and task-load both before and after a 10-minute micro-break, taken in either the regeneration pods (treatment group) or an ordinary meeting room (control group).

The results showed that participants who took their break in the regeneration pod reported lower post-break anxiety and perceived task-load, and higher post-break arithmetic task performance, than the control group.

The findings suggest that purpose-built spaces for restoration within office buildings will be effective for helping employees to proactively manage their stress levels while at work. Biophilic design principles will enhance the effectiveness of these spaces, and this does not necessarily need to involve direct exposure to plants or views of nature.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first randomised field experiment to test the effectiveness of a purpose-built space for restoration within offices. Additionally, this paper explores different forms of biophilic design than previous studies.

The prevalence of visually splendid multi-million-dollar cellar doors (CDs) builds an assumption that bricks and mortar create the co-created cellar door experience (CDE). This study aims to determine what attracts the visual attention of staff and customers during a CDE at three visual designs of CD: lively, stylised and simple.

A total of 23 customers and five staff consented to record their CDEs using TobiiPro2 glasses with 35 recordings providing 993 min for analysis with Tobii Pro Lab. Twenty-five areas of interest were used to calculate fixation and visit metrics.

The most attended elements of a co-created CDE were staff and faces. Attention is less influenced by the design of CD, whereas staff significantly influence attention.

The findings are valuable to the industry as they highlight the importance of human resources to a winery business, an increasingly casualised workforce. Future research could focus on staffing needs, including training and performance during experience delivery, with the expectation of increasing profitability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyse objective recordings of staff and customer visual attention during their experience.

Collectivism in service research is so bound with Asian cultures as to risk being overly deterministic. Contesting this stereotype, this paper surfaces the individualistic consumption facets of consumers within a collectivist cultural setting, describing the compensating role servicescapes may play and the service marketing opportunities they present.

Within a Chinese cultural research frame, a qualitative grounded approach is adopted that surfaces subconscious metaphors of private consumption through photo elicitation, deep psychological metaphor elicitation and triangulated with field observation.

Individuals within a collectivist culture do actively seek private psychic space to regenerate the self and prepare for social obligations heavily influenced by Confucian norms. Servicescapes play an important role in private consumption as they provide both a physical and mental oasis of privacy not easily obtainable in regular life and work.

Service providers could offer East Asian consumers a package that includes the individual aspect of their value system, whenever and however they see suitable. More specifically, servicescapes can be designed to provide services that facilitate consumer restoration by implementing the mental metaphors consumers of have this process.

A stereotype of a consumption has grown around Chinese consumers that while not totally false, misses a vital aspect of human values and risks missing profitable market niches. Consideration of the whole person's collective-individualistic cycle benefits both the consumer and the business.

Moving beyond a one-dimensional description of East Asian consumer behavior, focused on collective values, we show the key role servicescapes play in private consumption. A psychological renewal of the self, in preparation to re-enter the collective, show the multiple aspects of Asian consumers.

This research is apt to glean the underlying relationships between the perceived restorativeness (PR) and environmentally responsible behaviors (ERBs) transpiring in rice fields. The study site, the Xinkaiyuan Laotian District Cultural Landscape in Eastern Taiwan, has gained its popularity due to its romantic, idyllic setting as a rice field close to Pacific Ocean. The study deploys a questionnaire survey which collects 301 valid questionnaires. For the data analysis, it uses structural equation modeling to test study hypotheses. The study reveals that the compatibility dimension of PR has a significant effect on the general behavior and specific behavior of ERB. However, the other restorativeness dimensions entailing being away, fascination, and coherence show no significant effect. Thus, the ERB is mainly influenced by the respondent's compatibility rather than fascination toward a nature environment. In the concluding section, this study furnishes theoretical and practical implications along with suggestions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a holistic way of incorporating biophilic building design that creates a restorative environment attractive to prospective urban hotel employees. This study additionally examines the role of perceived well-being from nature attributes and associated impacts on emotions and likelihood to choose to work for a hotel with nature attributes.

This study used a conjoint analysis to detect the most resotrative individual and combinations of biophilic attributes that can improve employee well-being. In addition, nature attributes influence on emotions and intentions to work for a hotel were analyzed.

Results showed that not all nature attributes are equally evaluated by urban hotel prospective employees. In this study, the authors found that natural lighting, outdoor green views and indoor landscaping are important factors in the evaluation of an urban hotel with biophilic features. However, this tendency varies when the sample was divided by prospective employees’ who perceived higher or lower levels of well-being would be influenced by nature attributes.

Unlike previous studies, the authors tested a multiattribute design and results demonstrate the perceived restorative effect of nature attributes in an environment on prospective employees. In addition to extending the biophilic design in hospitality literature, the authors provide practical suggestions to urban hotels incorporating biophilic design and propose that specific elements have the propensity to enhance the well-being of prospective employees and reinforce positive emotions and intentions to work for urban hotels that incorporate them.