Can shopping centres foster wellbeing? A scoping review of motivations and positive experiences associated with non-shopping visits

•Shopping centres are social spaces.•A diversity of non-shopping motivations for visiting the shopping centre were identified.•People have various positive experiences when they visit shopping centres.•Non-shopping visits to shopping centres are associated with people's health and wellbeing. Shopping centres function as meeting places, and people are using them for various non-shopping purposes. Knowledge about different social spaces, and how they are used and perceived, is important for understanding health and wellbeing in the community and for developing health promoting societies. This scoping review provides an overview of existing research examining people's positive experiences and motivations for visiting shopping centres when shopping is not the main purpose. The results showed that people are motivated by the variety of available activities found in shopping centres and that they valued specific site features of the shopping centres. People reported a range of positive experiences when visiting shopping centres including social interactions, opportunities to escape their everyday life, and experiences of place attachment and social cohesion. This shows that, non-shopping use of shopping centres seems to be important for people's wellbeing and might facilitate health promotion and social sustainability in local communities.