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Abstract:
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Consumers are often faced with choices of location in the presence of others around them. These choices require a trade-off between locational preferences and the need to maintain sufficient personal space (e.g., in movie theaters, airplanes, classrooms, hotels). In this research, we provide a framework to collect, codify and analyze data where consumers choose locations (e.g., seats, rooms) in public environments. We show that results from models that do not account for the personal space component in evaluating locational preferences could be misleading and present a model that allows us to evaluate the contributions from both location and proximity to others (i.e., need for personal space) components in choices. We demonstrate that the understanding of locational preferences must simultaneously consider two components: the desire for a particular location given the focal elements (i.e., locational preferences) and the need to maintain personal space. We illustrate the methodology using two experiments on movie seats and concert tickets, and relate preferences to characteristics of the environment and seats.
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