place science

Hunter and colleagues studied how neighborhood design influences resident actions.  They report that “Parents . . . with preschoolers . . . living in Edmonton, Canada were recruited from each of Edmonton’s council wards. Parents reported demographic information and the importance of several neighborhood features (destinations, design, social, safety, esthetics) for their child’s active play, their own active recreation, and their coactivity. . . . The majority of parents reported that 23 of the 32 neighborhood features were perceived as being relevant for all activity domains.

Berger, Rocklage, and Packard studied the implications of communicating in different ways; their findings are broadly useful, for example, to people doing programming research.  The researchers report that “Consumers often communicate their attitudes and opinions with others, and such word of mouth has an important impact on what others think, buy, and do. . . .

Motoki and teammates studied how coffee shop design influences the experiences of people in them.  The investigators report that “Ratings of taste expectations, likelihood of visiting, and emotions were evaluated for each of 50 coffee shop images. . . . The results demonstrate that more reddish and lighter coloured coffee shop images were associated with the expectation that the coffee shop would serve a sweeter coffee, while more greenish and darker coloured coffee shop images were associated with more sour/bitter/tastier coffee expectations as well as a higher likelihood of visiting.”

How do virtual reality experiences stack up against those in the real world?  Jin and colleagues report that they “investigated how participant perceptions of a single interior environment varied among a real-world space (R) and two surrogate VR spaces (one made with 360° spherical photography and one made with 360° spherical digital rendering). A total of 42 undergraduate, interior design students were randomly assigned to one of two experiments, resulting in two groups of 21 students.

Kim and colleagues looked closely at how the number of humans in a restaurant influences products consumed.  They report that they studied “beverage consumption patterns in a real bar setting. Specifically, we examined (a) the effect of visual elements (i.e., consumption-inducing text messages on coasters), (b) the effect of social density, and (c) the joint effect of visual elements and social density. We manipulated coaster type (visual consumption-inducing messages either present or absent), measured social density, and collected sales data.