Latest Blog Posts

Chang and colleagues investigated factors that contribute to spending time in nature.  They found that there are genetic influences on the amount of time people are likely to spend in natural spaces and also on human desire to be in nature.

Chia-Chen Chang, Daniel Cox, Qiao Fan, Thi Nghiem, Claudia Tan, Rachel Oh, Brenda Lin, Danielle Shanahan, Richard Fuller, Kevin Gaston, and L. Carrasco.  2022. “People’s Desire to be in Nature and How They Experience It Are Partially Heritable.”  PLOS Biology, vol. 20, no. 2, e3001500, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001500

Seo evaluated responses to service robots in hotels.  They determined that “female service robots generated more pleasure and higher satisfaction compared to that of male service robots, and its influence is amplified when the level of anthropomorphism is high [the robots are more human-like] rather than low. Findings highlight the benefit of female service robots in a hotel setting which is only effective when the service robot is humanized, which provides useful guidelines for hoteliers when applying service robots in their service settings.” 

Soobin Seo.  2022. “When Female (Male) Robot Is Talking to Me:  Effect of Service Robots’ Gender and Anthropomorphism on Customer Satisfaction.”  International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 102, 103166, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2022.103166

Brandes and Dover evaluated how weather conditions influence user reviews; their findings may not come as too much of a surprise to anyone who’s ever collected user feedback.  The information gathered by Brandes and Dover may also help explain unexpected/unanticipated sets of reviews or with the scheduling of studies, when possible.  Brandes and Dover report that their study “uses a unique dataset that combines 12 years of data on hotel bookings and reviews, with weather condition information at a consumer’s home and hotel address. The results show that bad weather increases review provision and reduces rating scores for past consumption experiences. Moreover, 6.5% more reviews are written on rainy days and that these reviews are 0.1 points lower, accounting for 59% of the difference in average rating scores between four- and five-star hotels in our data. These results are consistent with a scenario in which bad weather (i) induces negative consumer mood, lowering rating scores, and (ii) makes consumers less time-constrained, which increases review provision. Additional analyses with various automated sentiment measures for almost 300,000 review texts support this scenario: reviews on rainy days show a significant reduction in reviewer positivity and happiness, yet are longer and more detailed.”  Brandes and Dover’s findings support asking people submitting reviews, etc., what the weather is outside as they’re writing and interpreting data collected accordingly.

Leif Brandes and Yaniv Dover.  “Offline Context Affects Online Reviews:  The Effect of Post-Consumption Weather.”  Journal of Consumer Research, in press, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac003

Nanayakkara and colleagues studied links between activity-based workplace design and organizational culture via interviews and surveys.  They report that “The objective of this paper is to examine the influence of introducing activity-based working (ABW) on existing organisational culture. It was addressed from the perspective of the management of large corporate organisations. . . . Workplace designs directly influence culture by supporting the systems, symbols, engagement/motivation and behaviours of the organisation and employees. . . .  the critical achievement of workspace design is to integrate the cultures, values and behaviours of organisations to meet their ultimate goals.”

Kusal Nanayakkara, Sara Wilkinson, and Dulani Halvitigala. 2021.   “Influence of Dynamic Changes of Workplace on Organisational Culture.”  Journal of Management and Organization, vol. 27, no. 6, pp. 1003-1020, https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2021.69

Cooper and associates probed why people use indoor air purifiers in their homes.  They learned that “One of the most widely available technologies to clean the air in homes of particulate matter of less than 2.5 µm in diameter (PM2.5), known to have negative health impacts, are portable home air purifiers (HAPs). . . . perceptions of IAQ were not correlated with measured high PM2.5 levels; occupants reported the HAPs to have a ‘cooling’ effect, which may explain why the predominant driver of HAP use was thermal comfort, rather than IAQ, in all three cities [where data were collected]. The latter finding was supported by a statistically significant increase in the probability of HAP use with increasing indoor temperatures.”

Elizabeth Cooper, Yan Wang, Samuel Stamp, and 16 others.  2022.  “Why Do People Use Portable Air Purifiers?  Evidence From Occupant Surveys and Air Quality Monitoring in Homes in Three European Cities.”  Building Research and Information, vol. 50, no. 1-2, pp. 213-229, https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2021.2001303

Sands and colleagues researched how urban planners believe design can drive city success.  They share that “In an online survey, urban planners were asked to identify the attributes that contributed to the success of the downtowns of mid-size urban areas prior to the pandemic as well as the attributes that would facilitate their post-pandemic recovery. While some urban scholars expect that recovery will lead to a ‘new normal’, the planners surveyed here are largely focused on restoring the ‘old normal’.”  

Gary Sands, Laura Reese, Chade Saghir, and Pierre Filion.  “Planning for Post-Pandemic Downtowns of Mid-Size Urban Areas.”  Planning Practice and Research, in press, https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2021.2016200