Getting to Yes at the Beach or in the Office? The Role of Location Formality and Negotiation Type on Negotiation Process and Outcomes

The negotiation location plays an important role in negotiations. The present study examined to what extent the negotiation process and outcomes are influenced by the formality of the location and negotiation type. It was hypothesized that negotiations in a beach setting would yield better integrative results than negotiations in an office setting, whereas an office setting would yield better distributive outcomes than a beach setting. To examine this, an experiment was conducted in a virtual reality laboratory in which dyads had to perform a job contract negotiation at the beach or in the office, that was either integrative or distributive. We found that the beach setting, as expected, created a more informal atmosphere, a more positive mood, and slightly less stress, but this difference did not depend on the negotiation type. Also, integrative negotiations yielded higher joint gains than distributive negotiations, but this was the same for both location settings.