The restorative potential of senior centers

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to help senior center managers and service researchers understand why some patrons experience health benefits, primarily fatigue relief, through senior center day services participation. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct two separate studies at a senior center. The first study represents a grounded theory that offers an original, basic social process regarding mental restoration in senior centers. The second study draws on Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and employs survey methodology. Findings – Senior center patrons who perceive a center's restorative stimuli experience health benefits such as relief from four types of fatigue, enhanced quality of life, and improved physical and mental well-being. Research limitations/implications – The paper shows that senior centers may be relatively inexpensive, non-medical services that can help patrons relieve fatigue symptoms, which are often treated with pharmaceutical medication and medical visits. A limitation is the small sample size, which restricts generalizability. Practical implications – The results show that senior center managers may promote patron health by fostering service designs and programs that allow members to temporarily escape from everyday life and interact in an ever-changing environment that fosters a sense of belonging. Social implications – Senior center day services help patrons relieve fatigue, and its symptoms, in an affordable, non-medical, and non-pharmaceutical manner. Originality/value – The paper clarifies the role of senior centers in patrons’ lives by drawing on ART. Senior centers that can offer patrons restorative environments are likely to play a significant role in patrons’ physical, social, and mental well-being.

Online support for vulnerable consumers: a safe place?

“…Moreover, the research broadens the conceptual boundaries of third places (Rosenbaum et al, 2016;Rosenbaum et al, 2014) by demonstrating an online social support group can be viewed as an online third place. Online social support groups are unique third places which are consumer-dominant and anonymous.…”

Co-designing services with vulnerable consumers

“…Vulnerable consumers may have difficulty defining their goals and preferences while simultaneously possessing fewer resources to achieve those goals and preferences (Ringold, 2005). Previous studies in TSR have examined vulnerable consumers' adoption of transformative services (Schuster et al, 2013(Schuster et al, , 2015 and service outcomes in these populations (Rosenbaum et al, 2014;Rosenbaum et al, 2011).…”

The Impact of Fitness Center Servicescape on Individual Behavior: The Mediating Role of Emotional Response

“…A compatible environment is a pleasing environment such that customers are able to carry out activities smoothly, without struggle and without embarrassment to achieve their consumption goal. Inferring from past studies conducted in a video arcade (Rosenbaum, 2009) and senior centers (Rosenbaum, Sweeney, & Massiah, 2014), the Natural Dimension hence can be hypothesized in the fitness center as H4a: Natural Dimension of Malaysian fitness center's servicescape has a positive impact on Behavioral Intention. H4b: Emotional Response mediates the relationship between Natural Dimension and Behavioral Intention.…”

“…The questionnaire consisted of six major sections adapted from several quantitative papers which has conducted research in the servicescape area (i.e. Physical Dimension, Social Dimension, Socially Symbolic Dimension (Hightower & Shariat, 2009), Natural Dimension (Rosenbaum et al, 2014), Emotional Response (Roy & Tai, 2003) and Behavioral Intention (Donovan & Rossiter, 1982;Jang & Namkung, 2009). In assessing Emotional Response, only pleasure and arousal were chosen as the emotions to be tested; dominance however, was disregarded as it proves little significance in associating with a person's emotion (Donovan & Rossiter, 1982;Graa & Daniel-Kebir, 2012;Russell & Pratt, 1980).…”