**Method**
The experimental design will entail a "staying outside" condition, a "going inside" condition and an "inside" control condition. The independent variable will consist of low temperatures for the "staying outside" condition and the "going inside" condition and high temperatures for the "inside" control condition. While Need For Affiliation constitutes the mediating variable, our main dependent variables will be communality and attractiveness, and our secondary (exploratory) variables will include willingness to purchase and amount willing to pay for the house.
Based on a pilot study we have already conducted (see Pilot Study Neutrality House, Pilot Study 1), we have selected a house close to neutral point of the scale on communality (M = 3.03, SD = 1.17, on a 5-point scale from 1 negative to 5 positive, N = 77) , price, and perceived attractiveness. In our study, Communality will be an average of questions to what extent people perceive the house as: 'Safe', 'Familiar', 'Homely', 'Soothing', 'Relaxing', 'Comfortable', 'Private', 'Having Quality’ (all measured on a 7-point Likert-scale from 1 not at all to 7 to a great extent; these items previously had a sufficient reliability: Cronbach’s alpha = .946 ). Perceived attractiveness and willingness to purchase will be measured through single item measures on a 7-point Likert-scale. Next, people will be asked how much they would be prepared to pay for the house in an open ended question. Furthermore, we will ask participants whether they are currently looking for a house, and if so, for how long. In addition, participants will fill in a questionnaire indicating their Need for Affiliation (5 items; on a 7-point Likert scale). The consumer test and the NFA questionnaire will be counterbalanced. Finally, we will ask them to estimate ambient temperature (for similar approaches, see IJzerman & Semin, 2010; IJzerman et al., 2014; Szymkow et al., 2013).
**Procedure**
Participants will be approached in three different locations corresponding to the three conditions. In the “staying outside” condition, they will be approached outside on colder days (defined as below 10 degrees Celsius) at places where people do not have the immediate intention to go inside (e.g., parks, passersby down shopping streets). In the “going inside” condition, we will recruit participants in a similar way, outside, on colder days at for example shopping streets or near libraries (based on convenience sampling). In this condition, we will tell participants that we will complete the questionnaire inside, but ask them to start filling out already. In the "inside" condition, people will be approached inside offices of the first three authors’ student holiday jobs and internship companies.
After we approach participants with the question if they would be prepared to complete a short questionnaire, they will asked to fill in an informed consent form, and we will give them an ostensible consumer test. This test will contain an advertisement of named house containing a description, a price indication, a picture of the house front and nine pictures of the interior (e.g., living room, kitchen, bathroom, bed rooms). Subsequently, participants will be asked to fill out the questionnaire we described above. Finally, we will conduct a funneled debriefing through which we will probe participants’ suspicion about the true purpose of the study.
