The global economy is increasingly service-oriented. Service environment is seen as a source of sustainable differentiation strategy ^[1][2][3][4][1,2,3,4]. This stream of research traces its roots and most of its theoretical groundings to environmental psychology, mainly the works of Mehrabian and Russell ^[5][6][5,6]. Informed by these works, Bitner [7] propounded the servicescape (described as “the manmade, physical surroundings as opposed to the natural or social environment”). Following this, enormous inquiries into the relations between the substantively staged physical service environment and relevant marketing goals have been explored. Nonetheless, Bitner’s [7] servicescape definition limits what elements in a service environment constitute its servicescape: only the manmade physical surroundings!

To conceptualize a comprehensive servicescape that expands its relational benefits in a postmodern experience economy ^[8][9][8,9], Arnould et al. [9] defined servicescape as “more or less consciously designed places, calculated to produce commercially significant actions”. With this, an increasing number of studies have rigorously explored the effects of both substantive staging (SS, i.e., the physical creation of contrived environments) and communicative staging (CS, i.e., the ways in which the environment is presented and interpreted) of servicescape [9] on firms’ competitiveness ^{[3][9][10][11]}[3,9,10,11]. Yet, Bitner’s [7] concern for the scant scientific research on a servicescape as a competitive resource and its impact on consumers—in marketing in particular—is still legitimate today. As Dedeoglu et al. [11] and J.Y. Park et al. [10] consistently noted, inquiries into the combined effects of the substantive and communicative staging of servicescape (SSoS and CSoS) on consumer responses are even fewer. Moreover, elements of a servicescape appear contingent, on the whole, upon the nature of the service industry ^[7][9][7,9]. Given the rapid evolution of the airport service setting, a comprehensive evaluation will provide invaluable information on service offerings that pleasure the customer (in this case, the traveler) to support the recent airport commercialization agenda.

Nonetheless, an investigation into the airport service environment—typically a substantively staged servicescape and a non-traditional one—has been paltry ^{[12][13][14][15]}[12,13,14,15]. Furthermore, extant studies have limited their scope of inquiries to SSoS [14] despite evidence suggesting that CSoS dominates the influence of SSoS on consumers [16]. Staff ineffectiveness, poor facilities, and information flow at airports are some of the triggers of passenger dissatisfaction ^[15][17][15,17]. Passengers spend a considerable amount of time at airports post-9/11 for safety reasons, and the time for arriving at airports to go through check-in and take-off has only lengthened during COVID-19 [18], affecting efficiency [19] and passenger demand ^[20][21][22][20,21,22]. The passenger, therefore, spends ample time interacting with both the physical and human elements along all service touchpoints. To ensure a memorable experience, insight into the intricate workings of SSoS and CSoS and passenger response relations is urgent.

2. Airport Servicescape

The context of service delivery in the postmodernist era of experience consumption has become a powerful resource. This resource is forged as a strategic tool for the attainment of organizational goals. This development has been ascribed to the notion that service consumers, for the most part, are co-creators of service experience or value. The value co-creation perspective is powerfully driven home with the assertion that “…the consumer is in the factory” [7] (p. 57), where production and consumption are inseparable. Bitner [7] then put forward the concept of a “servicescape” to represent the physical service setting. Others have expanded this idea of a servicescape to include the social environment ^[23][24][31,32]. Customers are said to holistically respond to the elements of the service setting [8]. Therefore, premised on the extant conceptualization of a servicescape ^[7][9][7,9], the airport servicescape is presented as a composite of the substantive and communicative staging of the airport service environment.

2.1. The Substantive Staging of the Airport Servicescape (SSoS)

The physical setting of service delivery has been found to directly influence consumers’ affective states, which mold their behavioral responses across service industries in the consumer and organizational behavior, retailing, and marketing literature ^[11][13][24][11,13,32]. Given the presence of immateriality and its attendant absence of ownership and possession—typical of most experiential products including educational, legal, administrative, travel, and tourism services—substantive staging (SS) builds beliefs, facilitates understanding, and impacts the subsequent evaluation of service firms ^[25][33]. A pleasant physical service environment, therefore, has been demonstrated to be evocative of consumers’ high service quality inferences, positive image, desirable emotions, and satisfying and even delightful and exciting sensations among consumers, effectuating loyalty intentions, and favorable purchasing and stay behaviors ^[11][26][11,34]. Retail stores, hotels, restaurants, and resorts, in particular, have benefitted immensely from these research outputs. However, due to service industries’ diverse nature, physical elements or clues that compose service settings are not uniform across service industries. Based on this rich service diversity, the disunity in measurement scales, as witnessed by Jeon and Kim ^[27][35], is not surprising, or perhaps, even expected. The assessment of the servicescape of these diverse service industries is necessary for sustainable development ^[28][36]. The operationalization of the SS has been fashioned substantially in earlier works on consumer–physical service environment interaction, particularly the seminal paper of Bitner [7]. The author’s conceptual work on servicescape generally outlines the components of the physical service settings and the elements subsumed in them. The three-componential framework consisted of the following: ambient conditions (i.e., sensory elements in the service environment including temperature, color, lighting, sound, smell); spatial layout and functionality (i.e., spatial arrangement of items, their relationships, and their ease of use where service delivery is either facilitated or hindered); and signs, symbols, and artifacts (i.e., features of the service setting devised to produce cues about service providers and service facilities to the consumer). Later attempts led to the development of some industry-specific variants, such as Dinescape (consists of ambient conditions, space or facilities, and signs, symbols, and artifacts) ^[29][37] and Festivalscape (consists of facility aesthetics, lighting, ambiance, layout, table setting, and service staff) ^[30][38]. These variants evolved to reflect the unique features of particular service industry settings. Cognizant of the absence of research on the strategic instrumentality of the substantively staged airport service environment, Moon et al. ^[31][39], with insights from Wu and Weber ^[32][40] and Wakefield and Blodgett’s ^[33][41] studies, developed the components of airports’ physical service setting. These consisted of layout accessibility (i.e., arrangement of furnishings, equipment, service areas, and passageways [7]), facility ambiance and aesthetics (i.e., the interior and architectural designs that enhance the attractiveness of the physical environment ^[34][42]), functionality (i.e., the ability of arranged machinery, equipment, and furnishings to facilitate the accomplishment of goals [7]), and cleanliness (i.e., the sense of neatness, tidiness, or orderliness in an establishment ^[35][43]). Ali et al. [12] reasoned that Moon’s ^[31][39] conception of airports’ physical environment was limiting. The authors pointed out that Moon et al. ^[31][39] did not capture such critical elements as signage, baggage trolleys, retail and dining options, crowding, internet and Wi-Fi connectivity, power sockets, and elevators. Given this limitation, Ali et al. [12] sought to improve Moon et al.’s ^[31][39] original four-component operationalization by adding attributes that have been omitted. Thus, Ali et al. [12] included signage and electronic equipment in layout accessibility and functionality, respectively. Because passengers require different facilities at different stages of travel ^[36][44], Park and Park [13] proposed amusement, functionality, cleanliness, convenience, attractiveness, and pleasantness to evaluate airport transfer servicescape. In Wiredja’s ^[37][45] passenger-centered model, the substantively staged airport servicescape consists of two main components: main facilities (i.e., service attributes such as Wi-Fi and chargers, trolley, signage or wayfinding, inter-terminal connection, information query, user-friendly restrooms, aerobridge, and a waiting area before boarding), and value addition (i.e., service attributes such as airport access, retail space, and other facilities such as ATMs). Essentially, elements of Wiredja’s ^[37][45] classification of the airport’s physical service environment encompass the four components developed by Moon et al. ^[31][39] and the improvements by Ali et al. [12].

2.2. The Communicative Staging of the Airport Servicescape (CSoS)

Earlier studies on servicescape development paid brief or no attention to social elements. The SS, as a result, has cardinally been the focus of research in marketing science. Academics are slowly—but increasingly—realizing the relevance of CS as a component of service settings ^[9][23][24][9,31,32]. Considering that CS deals with the presentation and interpretation of SS, meaning-making is at the heart of CS for service delivery. To construct meaning invariably requires an active participatory engagement between service providers and customers. Arnould et al. [9], for example, examined a wilderness servicescape, cardinally a natural environment. The authors established some markedly distinct qualities of this servicescape from those in prior studies, including that site preservation supersedes customers’ desires; the site forms the foreground and not the background; managers exercise little control over the site’s substantive staging. A crucial discovery was that the quality of communicative staging—presentation and interpretation of the site—enhances the experiential value of a wilderness servicescape, and that this communication is well-planned and synchronizes with the actual maneuvering through the physical servicescape. The CS and SS of a servicescape work in synergy to influence customer experience. Inquiries into this synergy, as expected, are tilted towards traditional service industries, such as hotels and restaurants. There is, therefore, the need to extend these inquiries to not-so-traditional service settings. In this regard, evaluating the joint contribution of SS and CS at the airport service setting would be a useful way forward. Other customers’ influence informs the need for customer homogeneity (similarity in appearance and behavior) ^[24][32]. The satisfaction of being in one’s comfort zone induces loyal behaviors. Some of these behaviors, such as word of mouth (WoM), reinforce customer homogeneity. Advertising and service personnel training are targeted at this end accordingly. However, the pan-cultural character of consumers of international airports disincentivizes the utility of this kind of segmenting measure. Instead, the employees’ pleasing appearance, effective, helpful, and courteous behaviors, and the staging of local culture that evoke customers’ loyalty behaviors are within airport management’s control. On interpersonal aspects, research shows that social encounters are important to experiential consumption ^[38][39][46,47]. The recent deployment of language help staff who speak the native language of core passenger segments at hub airports is a classic case of communicative staging. Language support is vital because customers’ emotional fulfillment lie—to a great extent—with non-financial burdens embedded in service delivery ^[40][48]. At airports, passengers’ emotional disquiet may arise from unpleasant sounds, high or cold temperatures, congestion, and rude and ineffective staff. More so, the existence of faithful patrons of first-class and business tickets and lounges at airports, who experience the best of airport staff, is emblematic of emotional supremacy in service evaluation. Consequently, airport staff courtesy, helpfulness, and efficiency greatly influence service evaluation and emotional and behavioral responses ^[41][49]. These indicators capture Wiredja’s ^[37][45] helpfulness and communication dimension of Airport Indicators of Passenger Experience (AIPEX). Cultural elements exert a significant effect on memorable service experiences and constitute a fundamental component of the CS of a servicescape. For example, traditional dresses worn by airport staff and the decoration of airport terminals with cultural motifs present the national identity of the host country ^[12][42][12,50]. Culture is an essential pull factor that draws traffic to a destination. Some tourists cite the desire to experience a new culture as their travel motivation ^[43][51]. Therefore, bringing local culture to airport terminals is demonstrated to be critical to passenger satisfaction and a salient generator of intention to visit or revisit the host city or country, leading to airport reuse ^[36][44]. These studies justify new investments geared towards the creation of quasi-destination at airports as a commercialization strategy. An assessment of how passengers respond to staff and local culture investments at airports as a form of CS is therefore relevant and timely.