A Cross-cultural Study on the Affection of Color with Variation of Tone and Chroma for Automotive Visual Display

Objective:The objective of this study is to evaluate affection on how users perceive colors viewed from an automotive visual display according to cultural and radical differences including North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. This study especially aims to identify effects of the variation of tone and chroma of representative color groups by analyzing affection differences depending on cultural and racial differences targeting the colors constituted through variation of tone and chroma, centered on representative colors. Background: The colors of the menu, information display or background viewed through an automotive visual display are an important factor stimulating consumer"s affection, and therefore an effort to express the vehicle"s brand and product image through colors is made. The studies on colors focus only on the research on unique characteristics of colors, but an affective approach lacks according to cultural and racial differences on colors considering tone and chroma variation within a color from the currently used automotive visual displays. Method: To grasp the visual affection felt by users, this study extracted affective adjectives related with colors through existing literature and a dictionary for adjectives, and presented human affection dimensions on colors through evaluation of various colors. Prior to carrying out affection evaluation, the basic light sources, red (R), green (G), and blue (B) constituting the colors used for automotive visual displays were defined as a representative color group, respectively. When colors in a color group are constituted, the evaluation target of each color group consisted of the colors considering the variation of tone and chroma by changing color sense through RGB values of the remaining two light sources. And then, this study carried out affection evaluation on the constituted colors targeting the subjects with cultural and racial differences. Results: As a result of evaluating the constituted colors with representative affections, there were statistically significant differences between the groups having cultural and racial differences. As a result of S-N-K post-hoc analysis on the colors showing significant differences, North America and Europe were classified as heterogeneous groups. In some cases, Korea was classified as the homogeneous group with North America, but Korea was mainly classified as the homogenous group with Europe. Conclusion: The representative affections on colors from an automotive visual display was drawn as three affective dimensions: passionate, neat, and masculine. Based on these, the affection of Korea and Europe on the constituted colors showed significant differences from that of North America, as a result of affection evaluation on the constituted colors viewed through the visual display by reflecting cultural and racial factors. Regarding representative color groups, bigger cultural and racial differences were revealed in terms of affection on red and green colors than on blue color, and variation of affection was the biggest in the red color. Application: This study analyzed correlations of affection considering the colors constituted through variation of tone and chroma, and the culture and race in the representative color groups constituting a visual display. The results of this study are predicted to be utilized in coordination and selection of colors viewed from an automotive visual display taking into account culture and race.