Abstract
As part of a CIFRE agreement with the company ARTHUR DUPUY®, this research is embedded in a current societal issue which is to favour the use of public transportation at the expense of the individual car. The thesis that we defend is that scent diffusion in public transport is one of the solutions that will contribute to achieving this goal. In a first study, we were interested in better understanding the cognitive processes at play in auditory-olfactory crossmodal interactions. Indeed, it has been shown that noise and odours have a negative impact on the comfort and well-being of transportation users. In a second study, we wished to study the potential existence of certain beliefs about fragrances and their use that could jeopardise the sustainability of a scent diffusion project: the perceived dangerousness of scents and the inference of manipulation intent. In a third study, we evaluated the effects of the diffusion of an ambient scent in a tramway carriage on user experience. Our results suggest that (1) it is possible to take care of olfactory annoyances independently of hearing annoyances (2) synthetic scents are perceived as dangerous to health (3) the diffusion of an ambient scent in a tramway carriage improves user comfort and decreases the perception of olfactory annoyances. Beyond theoretical and experimental contributions, this transdisciplinary work at the crossroads of psychology, marketing and transport, reveals that the study of the effects of the diffusion of an ambient scent in public transport on user experience is still in its infancy. New research is still needed to better understand the impact of this marketing technique and, ultimately, to exploit its full potential for the benefit of users.