Creating a hospitable hospital: How colors, music, and scent in the servicescape reduce rumination and enhance the patient waiting experience
通过五项实验（含一项实地研究）发现，医院服务场景中鲜艳的颜色、音乐与气味的组合能减少患者等待时的反刍思维，从而提升感知服务质量和好客度。
Reinforcing hospitality is a critical challenge for the healthcare industry, as creating a more hospitable environment can significantly enhance patients' experience, well-being, and recovery. During waiting periods, patients often engage in rumination — negative and repetitive thinking about their health condition — which diminishes their healthcare experience. Through five experiments, including one field study, we demonstrate that strategic servicescape design can effectively reduce rumination and improve patient outcomes. Specifically, a colorful visual environment decreases rumination by enhancing positive emotions, while the combination of music and scent, known to activate memory processes, reduces rumination, thereby improving perceived service quality and hospitality. Healthcare managers should use colors, music, and scent to design more hospitable environments and enhance patient experience. This research extends the servicescape literature by revealing how specific environmental elements can interrupt negative thought patterns with or without change in emotional states and enhance service experiences in healthcare settings. • Improving hospitability is a critical challenge in the healthcare industry. • Rumination – repetitive negative thoughts – is a main source of negative experience. • Vivid, varied colors reduce rumination by eliciting positive emotions. • A combination of scent and music decreases rumination via memory-related processes. • Reducing rumination enhances perceived quality and hospitableness of hospitals.