Colour, emotion, and behavioral intentions in city hotel guestrooms

Abstract

This study explores the effects of colours on people's emotional states and behavioral intentions in a real-world city hotel guestroom. For this study, blue, yellow, and gray were selected. According to literature, when it is desired to make a change on colour scheme in hotel rooms, the alteration should be applied to secondary colour while keeping the dominant colour constant. Thus, in this study, the alterations of colour scheme are only applied to bedspread and pillows fabrics. As results indicate, blue and yellow are associated with pleasure and arousal, whereas the gray colour evokes displeasure and no arousal. Yellow and blue are found to cause approach behavior in terms of customer loyalty, while the colour gray is found to cause avoidance behavior in city hotel guestrooms. There is a positive relationship between both pleasure and approach behavior and between arousal and approach behavior. The results can be useful for interior architects, designers, and hoteliers who emphasize touching guests' emotions and increasing approach behavior by creating favorable colour schemes. This study combines colour, emotion, and behavioral intentions in hospitality context which plays an essential role in filling gap in the literature about the effects of colour in a hospitality context.