Architecture of Choice: Exploring the Impact of Built Environments on Consumer Behavior

Every day, we are continually exposed to various architectural features in our living and working settings—by the spatial configuration, furniture, lighting, acoustics and views in our homes and offices. Although we may pay little attention to ordinary and seemingly innocuous shifts in our exposure to our surroundings, these subtle shifts can have tremendous impact on our thoughts and behavior (Damasio, 1994; Niedenthal, 2007). Despite the crucial interaction between people and their physical environment, there is little research showing how architectural elements affect behavior and choice in the consumer domain. Identifying such factors would be extremely important to understand consumers’ context-relevant behavior and decision processes. I combine theory and research methods from social and environmental psychology, design studies, and marketing to shed light on these important, yet rarely explored effects. In two essays, I investigate the interactions between consumers and their surroundings and how factors in the physical and social environment interplay to affect behavioral outcomes and decisions. The first essay examines the influence of physical elevation in built environments on risk-taking behavior. In a series of three field studies, this work demonstrates that people are more likely to display risky behavior when they are on higher levels of a building. Results from this study indicate that elevation influences risk-taking behavior by means of affecting sense of power, especially when others are present. In the second essay, I investigate the role of illumination on socially conscious behavior. The literature on lighting's effects on social behavior is inconclusive. Using postulates of embodied cognition, construal-level theory of psychological distance, and incorporating an identity-signaling perspective, results from this work suggest that illumination promotes socially desirable behaviors such as conformity, fairness, perspective-taking, charity donations, and healthy eating behavior. This occurs by means of an increase in public self-consciousness in brightly lit environments. This essay also addresses and reconciles discrepancies in the literature regarding the psychological consequences of illumination. Taken together, these essays introduce novel empirical findings on how architectural attributes (i.e., physical elevation and illumination) in combination with social attributes (i.e., mere social presence and social reference groups) influence social constructs (i.e., power and public self-consciousness) with downstream effects on consumer behavior and decision making (i.e., risk-taking, and socially conscious behavior). The main intention of this dissertation is to demonstrate that consumer behavior is more tightly connected to our physical surrounding than current literature may suggest. In a broader sense, the goal of this work is to bridge between architecture and marketing, two fields that have so far been disparate. I would call the outcome of this link the “architecture of choice” – which entails an understanding of the psychological impact of architectural design on consumers. This may, for instance, lead to the design of spaces that facilitate pro-social behavior, nudge consumers toward healthy choices, inhibit risky behavior and improve consumer welfare guidelines.PHDArchitecture & Bus Admin PhDUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136963/1/sinaest_1.pd