THE ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY OF PHOTOGRAPHIC SLIDES AND VIDEOTAPES IN SIMULATING THE SERVICE SETTING

In the study of consumers' evaluation of the service setting, laboratory experiments using environmental simulations provide researchers with a level of control that can otherwise be difficult to achieve in field studies. This article demonstrates that photographic slides and videotapes, used as environmental simulations in testing a theory of crowding, have ecological validity. The same theoretical model is tested with data obtained from a field quasi-experimental study and with data from a laboratory study that used photographic slides and videotapes to simulate the service setting. Conditions that may constrain the applications of various kinds of environmental simulations in consumer research on services are also discussed.