The Effects of Ambient Light on Consumer Product Choices

Stores and restaurants vary considerably when it comes to ambient light intensity with some stores and restaurants being very bright and others being very dim. But, would the ambient light intensity in a store or restaurant influence a consumer’s choices between virtue and vice products? We focus mostly on virtue and vice products in the context of healthy and unhealthy foods. However, we also extend our results to a non-food context. We predict that dim ambient lighting will lead to an increased preference for vice products and propose two theoretical explanations for why this may occur. Specifically, theories related to mental alertness would predict that consumers would be less mentally alert and more sleepy in dim (vs. bright) lighting. Theories related to disinhibition would also predict a greater preference for vices in dim lighting, since consumers tend to feel anonymous in dimly lit environments. Across, five experimental studies, two conducted in field settings at restaurants and three conducted in the lab, we test our hypothesis regarding the greater preference for vice products in dim lighting and empirically investigate which of the two competing theoretical explanations might be more dominant in driving this effect. Collectively, the results support our hypothesis and show that consumers choose vices to a greater extent in dim (vs. bright) lighting. Process evidence supports the mental alertness model and not the disinhibition model.