Psychological and Physiological Effects of Color Use on eCommerce Websites: a Neural Study Using fNIRS.

Colors surround us in all life situations and have the power to influence our mood and emotions, which makes color a crucial impact factor for decision making in ecommerce environments. Therefore, this research paper aims to explore the psychological and physiological effects of color use on websites with a neuroimaging method. For this, an experiment was designed in which 24 healthy participants watched an online shoe shop in 4 different colored versions during which their neural activity in the prefrontal cortex was measured. While comparing the neural activity between the different employed colors, distinct implications can be derived. That is, in comparison to the blueish website, (1) grey scaled websites require higher cognitive load but are rated as aesthetically pleasing, (2) greenish websites result in more negative valence while they require not more neural resources, and (3) reddish websites are rated low in valence and require higher neural processing resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]