Lighting effects on human behaviour and movements: a correlation between space syntax and modelling index in a museum environment

Abstract The aim of the paper is to find a correlation between lighting parameters and spatial properties in a museum environment to understand how artificial lighting influences visitor movements and behaviours. Lighting parameters are represented by the modelling index while spatial properties by space syntax indices. The importance of tools to understand the influence of light on the visitor experience in a museum is very important because lighting is crucial in designing art exhibitions. The results obtained by correlations in galleries of the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa (Italy) suggest that human behaviour is more influenced by the visual interaction between different points of the space than by the shortest paths linking different points.