Greenery in the Indoor Retail Environment: The Effect of Greenery on Environment Perceptions, Probable Behavior, and Willingness to Spend

Abstract

Retail environments are often described as ‘stressful’ and greenery has been found to put people in a more positive mood and decrease stress (Joye, Willems, Brengman, & Wolf, 2010). Most of the research investigating the effects of greenery in the retail setting has focused solely on the outdoor retail environment (Wolf, 2003), and has shown that ratings for place perceptions were higher and that consumers would pay more for products in the forested retail environments than in the not forested ones. This research paper aims to determine whether the presence of greenery in the indoor retail setting will lead to 1) more positive environment perceptions; 2) increased probable shopping behavior; and 3) an increase in the amount of money customers are willing to spend for clothing items. 306 participants were split into three groups (no-plants, medium-plants, or many-plants), presented with pictures of retail settings and clothing items and answered a questionnaire. The hypotheses were not supported. However, the testing of items separately provided support for statistically significant differences in ratings of the statement ‘the store setting is visually pleasing and desirable’ between no-plants and many-plants conditions.