Digital claustrophobia: Affective responses to digital design decisions

Abstract

This research introduces the concept of ‘digital claustrophobia,’ examining how stable individual differences in claustrophobic tendencies can generate affective reactions to spatial elements online. The findings indicate that elevated claustrophobic tendencies lead to emotional discomfort and negatively moderate spatial constraint effects on website evaluations and anticipated product satisfaction. A series of exploratory studies establishes that (1) a common measure of individual differences in claustrophobia applies in digital commerce contexts, (2) claustrophobia alters reactions to spatial constraints, which changes downstream consequences such as mood, website design evaluation, and anticipated product satisfaction, and (3) these effects persist for more claustrophobic individuals in spatially constrained digital interfaces even when general affective measures such as mood are explicitly primed. This work is the first to investigate the role of claustrophobic tendencies in e-commerce environments in the context of anticipated satisfaction and suggests a foundation for numerous future research avenues.

Keywords

• Affect
• Claustrophobia
• Digital space
• Mood
• Spatial constraint
• Visual complexity