Malls designed for inclusion? Emotional experience of irritating aspects of the mallscape that distance consumers with disabilities
ISSN: 0887-6045
Article publication date: 18 January 2024
Issue publication date: 29 February 2024
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to identify the irritating aspects in the mall environment that impact shoppers with disability and explore the opportunities to design inclusive mall environments.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed-methods design was used in which data collected using a survey (n = 1,434 shoppers with and without disability) were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) and repeated-measures two-way ANOVA. In addition, qualitative data were obtained from critical incident technique (CIT) stories (n = 521) from shoppers with and without disability.
Findings
Mall environmental irritants evoke feelings of irritation that mediate the impacts of “inconvenient ambient conditions,” “the annoying socialscape” and “overwhelming design and atmospherics” on decreased mall-visit frequency. Compared with shoppers without disability, shoppers with disability suffer more from these irritating aspects of the mall environment, as evidenced by significantly greater high-activation unpleasant emotions. The “poor access and accessibility” category of irritants mainly affects the mall experiences of shoppers with disability.
Practical implications
Based on the findings, this study offers spatial-, temporal-, social-, material- and virtual-oriented recommendations for the design of inclusive retail spaces. The authors suggest that people with disability have a unique “lived experience” perspective on retail environments and that solutions should be co-created based on ongoing consultations with shoppers and employees with disability.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study offers the first systematic, comprehensive comparison of the impact of environmental irritants on shoppers with and without disability and extends the literature on irritating aspects of retail environments from individual stores to malls.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper is dedicated to the service users and professional teams of the Shekulo Tov Group (https://iumodel.org/), whose models, service design and community-based support maximize mainstream employment inclusion of people with complex disabilities. The authors thank Tevel Mark for help with data collection, Ran Turjeman for assistance with data processing and Dawn Schmidt for language editing. The authors also thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful feedback. Finally, the authors thank the Ruppin Academic Center for funding the data collection and additional technical aspects of the work.
The authors hereby confirm that this manuscript has not been published elsewhere and has not been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere.
The authors also state that there is no potential conflict of interest for any of the institutions or for any of the authors for the past three years.
In addition, since some of the study participants were people with disabilities, the authors obtained institutional review board approval for this study (no. 173), which they can provide upon request.
Citation
Vilnai-Yavetz, I., Gilboa, S. and Mitchell, V. (2024), "Malls designed for inclusion? Emotional experience of irritating aspects of the mallscape that distance consumers with disabilities", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 344-368. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-09-2023-0352
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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