1. Introduction
Sustainable development consists of multidimensional aspects. It can deliver a worthwhile structure to examine the numerous effects of urban development. Sustainable development is considered as the triple bottom line for environmental, social, and economic development [
1,
2]. The sustainable urban form sometime can be termed as sustainable urbanism. This great concept has existed and influenced development for the last twenty years [
3,
4]. Built environments and the building sector is the area which uses an important amount of energy and materials that are produced by world resources. The sustainable shopping mall is an approach to architectural design that emphasizes the place of buildings within both local ecosystems and the global environment. Sustainable shopping seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact by enhancing efficiency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, development space, and easy accessibility [
5].
Shopping mall design can play a key role in the creation of a sustainable future. Design can integrate ecological requirements in the business creation process and go far beyond it. Acting as a bridge between people, technology and business, design can facilitate the systematic integration of economic, social and environmental parameters in the framework of new and more sustainable patterns of production, marketing, distribution and use [
5].
Design and location can become a powerful engine for suitable innovation. It can help businesses in generating solutions able to stimulate new social behaviors (e.g., accessibility versus ownership, sharing versus individual use, upgrade ability versus substitution) whilst still supporting economic societal needs. In this way, it complies with the change in the complex world that is required from design culture; from eco-design to sustainable design [
6].
Norman Foster described, sustainability is the achievement of the maximum by using the minimum rate of resources. Sustainability should first of all comprise the equality, sharing and it should also construct the balance between the natural environment and the artificial configurations [
7]. Regarding this, sustainable architecture should consider the construction as a piece of world ecology and should combine climatic responsiveness with functional efficiency and a pleasing appearance. A sustainable building’s design should include considerations regarding orientation, natural ventilation, daylight, solar control and thermal capacity, which could result in potent form-finding building elements. Taken together, they can trigger a new architecture language, which is the discourse of the energy conservation requirements by composing the equilibrium between the world economy and its ecological systems. In this context, architecture and the environment are inextricably linked and their relationship becomes complex and multi-faceted by considering the principles of sustainable development [
8,
9].
Kevin defined urban form as “the spatial pattern of the large, inert, permanent physical objects in a city.” [
10]. Urban form is a result of bringing many things together of many element-concepts: The urban pattern. Urban patterns are designed and created largely of a limited number of relatively undifferentiated types of elements that repeat and combine [
11]. Specifically, elements of concepts might be street patterns, block size and form and street design.
The urban form contains a compact building form, a sustainable built environment that is walkable, accessible, well-designed spaces, diverse uses, and mixed-use developments [
12]. The urban forms are ‘static tissues’ of urbanism. According to Talen [
13], these static tissues are “supported by connecting urban form with public transport, physical activities, social sustainability, climate change, and good environmental quality” [
14,
15,
16].
According to Dumreicher [
17], a “sustainable city should be compact, dense, diverse, and highly integrated. They ask for an urban form that is easily walkable, small enough to eliminate even the desire for a private automobile, yet large enough to provide the variety of opportunities and services that constitute a rich urban life”. The compact development and walkable concept are the main components of the urban form [
12,
18]. This type of development helps to gain contiguity and connectivity in urban areas [
19]. It is believed worldwide that the urban form (compact development) might be helpful to achieve desired sustainable goals.
The sustainable transportation play a vital role in urban form as Clercq [
20] has discussed “sustainability is defined as diminishing both mobility and the negative of traffic.” Moreover, Elkin [
21] also emphasis that sustainable urban form should be a form and scale appropriate to walking, cycling, and efficient public transport and must have compactness that encourages social interaction. It must enable access to the facilities and services of the city while minimizing the resulting external costs. Sustainable transportation provides equitable access for people and their goods and helps achieve a healthy and desirable quality of life in each generation, and is financially affordable, operates at maximum efficiency, and supports a vibrant economy [
12].
The fast growing ratio of personal motorized vehicle in dense cities causes alarming transport and environmental problems [
22]. It affects travel behavior, which in turn affects air quality, open spaces, global climate, and noise pollution. Moreover, growing evidence from around the world indicates that owing to our excessive use of fossil fuels, especially in affluent countries, greenhouse gas concentrations are accumulating at an alarming rate [
23]. However, the urban sustainable form will help to reduce the burden on private own vehicles. Therefore, the shopping malls and mega structure should be near public transportation and pedestrian paths.
Accessibility of shopping centers depends on their location close to residential populations. Their economic viability depends on having sufficient population within their catchments. In classic central place theory, the lower the residential density, the further apart retail centers will need to be in order to be viable [
24]. Thus their accessibility decreases with population density and an increase in population around activity centers becomes obvious if problematic goal.
The convenience of public transport, buses, subway, and rail transit brings more public towards shopping malls. While selecting the location of shopping malls the real estate developers and investors consider the availability of public transportation and pedestrian paths. However, subway and rail planning should take shopping centers into account because a subway’s purpose is to connect functional areas. Hence, the subway and rail transit lines have direct effects on the location of the shopping centers. However, most consumers in China go shopping via public transportation. Therefore, shopping malls near to public transportation is the first choice of public, investors and developers [
25,
26].
The shopping malls are a spatial pattern of highly decorated and well organized retail stores with homogeneous and heterogeneous items under one roof. Simultaneously, it provides leisure, joyfulness, entertainment and many other composite forms [
26,
27,
28]. These complex structures provide social interaction, easy access to all facilities and services, and better quality of urban life. The density and diversity in malls reduce the consumption of energy. They are equipped with combined heat and power systems and are easily accessible (micro-macro accessibility). Therefore, shopping malls are also a type of compact development [
12]. Shoppers in the malls not only enjoy a marvelous range of retail services, but they also experience leisure and recreational values [
29]. The shopping mall is a place that provides and promote social, leisure, entertainment events, and also sustainable development [
30,
31].
Additionally, the ambiance, built environment, and entertainment have a positive impact on consumption. They attract more public to shopping malls. These structures have somehow the gravitational force which provokes people to visit them [
32,
33]. Conceptualizations of the term place, once it is perceived as a physical place full of particular sustainable features (inevitably in a physical, cultural and observer-specific mental context), can turn out to be a magnet a highly attractive environment. Until then, it only demonstrates a potential to become such an attractor [
34,
35].
Shopping malls are some of the best attractive places in urban areas. Malls are needed by everybody, or at least households [
36,
37]. Shopping malls are places that act like magnets to highly provoke shoppers [
34,
35]. Their perception from most of the researchers is that the purchasing of goods is not sufficient for the present shopping value of shoppers. Scholars believe that most of the shoppers who visit shopping malls, mainly gain the value of sensual and emotional satisfaction whilst shopping [
38,
39,
40]. Most shoppers desire to have fun whilst shopping, and they view malls as entertainment places [
26,
27,
33].
In the past, different studies have been conducted on various aspect of shopping malls and sustainable development. However, none of the previous studies have conducted a study on the features of urban forms (built environment) and relationships among consumption, ambiance, and entertainment [
41,
42]. Therefore, we have developed a theoretical model and an empirical study to analyze the relationship among urban forms and shopping factors, which incline shoppers towards shopping malls.
In Asian countries, shopping malls are developing rapidly [
43]. Presently, China’s economy is growing rapidly. In the 1990s, the first shopping malls were introduced in China. In large cities in China, shopping malls have been the main interest of real estate developers and multinational groups for the last twenty years [
26]. Since 2008 in Hangzhou, which is the capital of Zhejiang province, modern shopping malls have developed. This trend is increasing rapidly, and many new shopping malls are being developed in China and in the Zhejiang province.
In regards to Hangzhou city in China, Hangzhou is the main tourism, cultural, and historical city situated along the Chinese southeastern coast [
40]. The purpose of this article was to examine a theoretical and empirical study on the features of urban form and the relationships among ambiance, consumption, entertainment, and built environment in the presence of entertainment (social sustainability) and built environment as mediators. In addition, how do these factors promote sustainability and provoke shoppers towards shopping malls? However, this study may contribute to exploring the positive relationships among ambiance, consumption, entertainment, and built environment, as well as the completely mediating role of entertainment and built environment. However, China has a keen concern with the government and various organizations to achieve sustainable development goals. Therefore, shopping malls also play their role to achieve and promote sustainable development.
4. Data Analysis
Analysis of moment structure (AMOS) and SPSS were used as a statistical tool to analysis the collected data [
111]. The large value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) for all items was measured as 0.919, which is greater than the recommended standards value of 0.5 [
112], and Bartlett’s test of sphericity values was also noted, which included an approximate chi-square of 4955.635, a df = 276, and a
p = 0.000, for the different factors. The goodness of fit indices is shown in
Table 2. However, the results of the goodness of fit index (GFI) = 0.932, adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) = 0.911, the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) = 0.020, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.033, close = 0.995, the Normed Fit Index (NFI) = 0.949, the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.987, the Relative Fit Index (RFI) = 0.940, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = 0.985, and the incremental fit measure (IFI) = 0.987. The results of this analysis is above the thumb rule [
113,
114,
115]. These values exceeded the good fit criteria in that Bentler [
116] recommended χ
2/d.f. shouldn’t be greater than three, and results of NFI and CFI should above 0.9 for a good ft. The estimates for GFI and AGFI, Seyal [
117], has suggested that estimates should above the recommended value of 0.8 as a good ft.
Table 3 illustrates the measurement model of all of the factors loaded on various variables with a satisfactory level of statistical significance. The beta, the t-test value, and the α values are given in
Table 3, which proves convergent validity of all constructs with a significant level of satisfaction [
118]. The Cronbach’s α value of all factors is above 0.70 as recommended by [
108,
119]. Moreover, internal consistency was also examined by measuring CR, discriminant validity, and convergent validity for all items to check the validity of the data and model as shown in
Table 4. The (CR) of each item (0.939–0.833), which exceeds the standardized (CR ≥ 0.7) [
107,
120]. The results of the average variance extracted (AVE) of each items is 0.715 to 0.555, and the convergent validity should be greater than 0.50, which is often used as a threshold [
121,
122].
Table 4 shows the AVE values greater than the squared correlations, thus model fits the criteria for discriminant validity [
123].
Testing Hypothesis
The full structural equation model using the maximum likelihood method was used measure the hypothesis. We have designed six hypotheses. All six hypotheses are confirmed from the correlation (see
Table 4) and can also be confirmed from regression coefficients illustrated in
Figure 2.
The mediation for the present study is proved with the help of Baron and Kenny’s recommendations [
124]. According to Baron and Kenny, there is support for mediation if the following criteria is obtained: (a) The independent variables relate to the dependent variable, (b) the independent variables relate to the mediating variable, and (c) the mediating variable relates to the dependent variable and the relationship of the independent variables with the dependent variable is significantly lower (for partial mediation) or insignificant (for full mediation) in the magnitude.
Moreover, with the suggestions of Qing et al., [
107], we create five nested models and compare them (as shown in Table 6). Model 1 is a hypothesized one having direct path from ambiance to consumption. The model was also compared with three other models. Model 2 integrated no direct path from ambience to outcome variables, model 3 integrated a direct path from ambience to consumption, Model 4 integrated paths from ambience to entertainment, entertainment to built environment, built environment to consumption, and a direct path from ambience to consumption, and Model 5 integrated paths from ambience to built environment to consumption and a direct path from ambience to consumption. It is revealed in
Table 5 that the Chi-square difference is not significant while comparing the hypothesized model 1 to all other models. These results prove that model 1 is the best-fitted model and evidence of mediation. Model 1 and model 2 represent the full mediated model where the direct path from ambiance to consumption (β = 0.09;
p = 0.161) is disappeared and insignificant in the presence of mediators (environment and build environment) and provide full mediation (see
Figure 2).
In line with the above evidence, we also evaluated indirect effects for full or partial mediation confirmation [
109,
125]. As seen in
Table 6, we found that the indirect effects of entertainment (β = 0.18,
p < 0.01, t = 4.39) and built environment (β = 0.09,
p < 0.05, t = 2.25) are significant. The direct relationship between ambiance and consumption (β = 0.09,
p = 016, t = 1.86) is not significant and supported Hypothesis 5 and 6 with full mediation.
5. Conclusions
This study has examined various features of urban form and factors of shopping malls, which promote sustainable development and provoke shoppers toward shopping malls. The study results showed that the built environment, entertainment (social sustainability), ambiance, and consumption can help to achieve sustainable development and incline shoppers towards shopping malls. These factors have positive impact on sustainable development (urban form) and on consumption. Moreover, from the literature, we found that very few studies have discussed the relationship among the above factors and their impact on urban form features and on shopping malls.
The empirical results of this study showed that entertainment (social sustainability) and built environment completely mediate between ambiance and consumption, which supported hypotheses five and six [
39,
65,
101,
126,
127]. This is an important contribution of this study. This study has also supported sustainable urban form with more density, compact development, interior design, accessibility, and the reduced use of energy and sustainable transportation will minimize the impact on the environment and will promote sustainable development. The shopping mall near to bus stations and metro stations will attract more public and will save the environment [
12]. In the present scenario, it was confirmed that entertainment and built environment are important factors of urban forms, which save the environment and incline shoppers towards shopping malls [
33,
60,
128,
129]. Furthermore, hypothesis one and two also supported our study, because ambiance had a positive relation with entertainment and consumption provided a pleasant atmosphere for the people [
47,
76]. Whereas, this study also proved that entertainment and the built environment have a positive relation with consumption [
51,
59]. Therefore, hypothesis three and four were also supported.
The general perception of most shoppers is that besides shopping, entertainment, leisure, and time spent with friends and family are also purposes of visiting shopping malls. This promotes social sustainability, or this will promote social sustainability. It has been confirmed from theoretical and empirical results that these factors have a positive relationship. The shopping mall, which provides most of these facilities, will attract more shopper.
In the contemporary world, most of the shoppers visit brick and mortar retailers not only for shopping but also for leisure, an enjoyable environment, and to spend some time with family and friends. The developers and managers should offer entertainment, a built environment, climate saving measures, promote sustainable development goals, and an attractive motivational and pleasant shopping environment.