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1 – 10 of over 2000Ryszard Kłeczek and Monika Hajdas
This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses an interpretive case study of the art exhibition “1/1/1/1/1” in the Oppenheim gallery in Wroclaw. It draws on multiple sources of evidence, namely, novice visitors’ interviews, observation including photo studies and content analysis of art-makers’ mediation sources. This study is an example of contextual theorizing from case studies and participatory action research with researchers as change agents.
Findings
The evidence highlights that aesthetic values and experiences are contextual to practices and are transformable into other values. The findings illustrate the role of practice theory in studying how art-makers inspire the transformation of practices, including values driving the latter.
Research limitations/implications
The findings provide implications for transformations of co-creating contextual values in contemporary visual art consumption and customer experience management.
Practical implications
Practical implications to arts organizations are also provided regarding cultural mediation conducted by art-makers. Exhibition makers should explain the meanings of the particularly visible artefacts to allow visitors to develop a congruent understanding of the meanings. The explanations should not provide ready answers or solutions to the problem art-makers suggest to rethink.
Social implications
The social implication of our findings is that stakeholders in artistic ventures may undertake adequate, qualified and convergent actions to maintain or transform the defined interactive practices between them in co-creating contextual aesthetic values.
Originality/value
The study provides new insights into co-creating values in practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions by bringing the practice theory together with an audience enrichment category, thus illustrating how novice visitors get enriched by transforming their practices led by contextual values of “liking” and “understanding”.
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Vania Ceccato, Emrah Ercin, Julia Hazanov, Sara Elfström and Adriana Sampaio
In this study, the authors report visitors' and personnel's safety experiences and concerns in order to understand the safety conditions of a library.
Abstract
Purpose
In this study, the authors report visitors' and personnel's safety experiences and concerns in order to understand the safety conditions of a library.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is based on answers from a small sample survey of library visitors, interviews with the personnel and incidents recorded in a library in Stockholm the capital of Sweden.
Findings
Dealing with visitors under influence of drugs/alcohol or feeling intimidated by groups of young individuals are examples of situations in which the staff feel most unsafe. Visitors declare witnessing problems of public disturbance and disorderly conduct, fights and other types of aggression. Although the vast majority of visitors declare feeling safe in the library, their perceptions vary according to the library's environment and their individual characteristics, including their previous victimization.
Practical implications
The study is novel because it indicates the importance of the environment to ensure the safety conditions of the library for both visitors and staff. Finally, research on safety in libraries is often from North America and Western European contexts, while this study contributes to the international literature by illustrating libraries in a Nordic European context.
Social implications
The study indicates that more social control, both formal and informal, is at the top of the list of recommendations for visitors. Among personnel, recommendations include the need for cooperation with other local actors to solve problems in surrounding areas as well as better education for librarians in dealing with the current safety challenges of libraries as multifunctional public facilities.
Originality/value
Combine visitors' and personnel's safety experiences to better understand the safety conditions of a public library.
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Veronica Vitali, Claudia Bazzani, Annamaria Gimigliano, Marco Cristani, Diego Begalli and Gloria Menegaz
This study proposes a literature review and, based on the findings, the authors develop a conceptual framework, attempting to explain how technology may influence visitor behavior…
Abstract
Purpose
This study proposes a literature review and, based on the findings, the authors develop a conceptual framework, attempting to explain how technology may influence visitor behavior and eventually trade show performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The present research explores the role of visitors in the trade show context. The analysis specifically focuses on the variables that influence visitors’ participation at business-to-business trade shows and how their satisfaction and perception can be related to exhibition performance. The authors also take into consideration technological trends that prior to COVID-19 pandemics were slowly emerging in the trade show industry.
Findings
The findings highlight a continuity between pre-, at and postexhibition phases. Visitors’ behavior represents a signal of how a trade show is perceived as postexhibition purchases and next visit emerge as signals of an exhibition evaluation in relation to visitors’ perception. Besides being urgent tools for the continuity of the sector due to the pandemics, emerging technological trends can be key elements in understanding visitors’ behavior and in boosting their interest and loyalty toward trade shows.
Originality/value
The paper proposes a conceptual model including top notch and innovative technological trends to improve the understandment of visitors’ behavior. Both practitioners in companies and academics might find the study useful, given the digital uplift generated by the pandemics.
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Martinette Kruger and Adam Viljoen
Zoos are important urban tourism attractions. The challenge for zoos is finding a balance between attracting visitors and enhancing education and conservation management. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Zoos are important urban tourism attractions. The challenge for zoos is finding a balance between attracting visitors and enhancing education and conservation management. This research contributes to a greater understanding of the conservation intentions of zoo visitors and how zoos can emphasise conservation management principles sustainably. This study aims to identify the variables that encourage conservation intentions among visitors to a South African zoo.
Design/methodology/approach
A destination-based survey was conducted in 2019 at the Johannesburg Zoo, and 445 questionnaires were administered through convenience sampling.
Findings
Exploratory factor analyses identified visitors’ conservation awareness because of zoos (pre-conscious, conscious and unconscious), behavioural intentions (advocating and supporting), motives (engagement, edutainment and escapism) and satisfaction (interaction and facility quality, and service and interpretation quality). The behavioural intentions were the dependent variables. Advocating conservation intentions (ACI) is an active role where zoo visitors feel a strong responsibility towards conservation and encourage others to the conservation cause. Supporting conservation intentions (SCI) relates more to loyalty towards visiting the zoo and subsequently supporting conservation. Stepwise linear regression analyses revealed that enhancing ACI relies on SCI, edutainment, conscious awareness, service and interpretation quality and total spending. However, enhancing SCI relies on ACI, interaction and facility quality and the motive, escapism, while engagement revealed a negative relationship.
Originality/value
The results show that zoos can encourage SCI to ACI by using interactive and entertaining interpretations to teach visitors about the zoo’s mandate and the importance of conservation while balancing their need to escape.
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Little is known about the overall meaning of the Chernobyl exclusion zone (CEZ) from the visitors’ point of view. Conceptualizing the zone as a storyscape and its narratives as…
Abstract
Purpose
Little is known about the overall meaning of the Chernobyl exclusion zone (CEZ) from the visitors’ point of view. Conceptualizing the zone as a storyscape and its narratives as intangible heritage resources, this study aims to investigate the visitors’ engagement with these resources and the resulting articulations from the engagements as translated into verbal and visual storytelling.
Design/methodology/approach
Participant observation and participant generated images in combination with in-depth interviews with different types of tourists were conducted. This paper uses the photographs chosen by the interviewees themselves as a photo essay to explore the evocation of stories through narrative engagement.
Findings
Through participant-oriented research, this study identified three dominant storytelling themes through which visitors focus their understanding of the CEZ. Visitors’ narrative engagements and visual storytelling co-produce the site and entail fluid and even conflicting narrative articulations about the CEZ and its cultural significance.
Research limitations/implications
The discoveries of this study stem from a unique developing heritage site. This study provided a more nuanced understanding of the different visitor categories in the CEZ and their group-specific ways to articulate, imagine and co-produce the storyscape of Chernobyl.
Originality/value
Gaining insight into the verbal and visual storytelling of tourists will contribute to the discussion of narrative consumption of different consumption profiles in tourism sites in addition to the mediation and construction of entangled memory spaces.
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Ilona Pezenka and Christian Weismayer
Few studies to date have explored factors contributing to the dining experience from a visitor’s perspective. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether different…
Abstract
Purpose
Few studies to date have explored factors contributing to the dining experience from a visitor’s perspective. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether different restaurant attributes are critical in evaluating the restaurant experience in online reviews for visitors (non-local) and local guests.
Design/methodology/approach
In all, 100,831 online restaurant reviews retrieved from TripAdvisor are analyzed by using domain-specific aspect-based sentiment detection. The influence of different restaurant features on the overall evaluation of visitors and locals is determined and the most critical factors are identified by the frequency of their online discussion.
Findings
There are significant differences between locals and visitors regarding the impact of busyness, payment options, atmosphere and location on the overall star rating. Furthermore, the valence of the factors drinks, facilities, food, busyness and menu found in the reviews also differs significantly between the two types of guests.
Practical implications
The findings of this study help restaurant managers to better understand the different customer needs. Based on the results, they can better decide which restaurant aspects should receive the most attention to ensure that customers are satisfied.
Originality/value
Research on online reviews has largely neglected the role of different visitation motives. This study assumes that the reviews of local and non-local restaurant visitors are based on different factors and separates them to gain a more fine-grained and realistic picture of the relevant factors for each particular group.
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This study investigates human behavior, specifically attitude and anxiety, toward humanoid service robots in a hotel business environment.
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates human behavior, specifically attitude and anxiety, toward humanoid service robots in a hotel business environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The researcher adopted direct observations and interviews to complete the study. Visitors of Henn-na Hotel were observed and their spatial distance from the robots, along with verbal and non-verbal behavior, was recorded. The researcher then invited the observed hotel guests to participate in a short interview.
Findings
Most visitors showed a positive attitude towards the robot. More than half of the visitors offered compliments when they first saw the robot receptionists although they hesitated and maintained a distance from them. Hotel guests were also disappointed with the low human–robot interaction (HRI). As the role of robots in hotels currently remains at the presentation level, a comprehensive assessment of their interactive ability is lacking.
Research limitations/implications
This study contributes to the HRI theory by confirming that people may treat robots as human strangers when they first see them. When a robot's face is more realistic, people expect it to behave like an actual human being. However, as the sample size of this study was small and all visitors were Asian, the researcher cannot generalize the results to the wider population.
Practical implications
Current robot receptionist has limited interaction ability. Hotel practitioners could learn about hotel guests' behavior and expectation towards android robots to enhance satisfaction and reduce disappointment.
Originality/value
Prior robot research has used questionnaires to investigate perceptions and usage intention, but this study collected on-site data and directly observed people's attitude toward robot staff in an actual business environment.
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The purpose of this study is to investigate through an empirical research the factors that would attract visitors to heritage and cultural sites as museums applied on the Grand…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate through an empirical research the factors that would attract visitors to heritage and cultural sites as museums applied on the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM). The paper aims to study the impact of the proposed attraction features learning/knowledge, museum facilities, fun/entertainment and socializing and accessibility/location on pre-visit destination image.
Design/methodology/approach
The author started by a thorough literature review to arrive to the suggested conceptual model, which is tested by adopting a quantitative approach where data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire from a convenient sample of 300 respondents with 90% response rate and used partial least squares – structure equation modelling using Smart PLS v.3.2.8.
Findings
The results show that three of the tested factors were accepted and one was rejected.
Practical implications
Management of GEM, which will be one of the biggest museums world-wide, can make use of the empirical results of this research to enhance their understanding of the factors that impact pre-visit destination image, and thus, most attract visitors to justify the budget set in this huge project and achieve highest visitation and revenue
Originality/value
This research deals with a new museum that has not opened its doors yet and will start functioning in late 2020, and thus, the pre-visit image of the museum is not based on previous experience of visitors but rather on secondary sources as messages sent to visitors based on attraction features, while most previous studies dealt with post-visit image of museums
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Greg D. Simpson, Jessica Patroni, Albert C.K. Teo, Jennifer K.L. Chan and David Newsome
The purpose of this paper is to postulate that the technique of Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) is currently underutilised in visitor management studies reported in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to postulate that the technique of Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) is currently underutilised in visitor management studies reported in the peer-reviewed marine wildlife tourism (MWT) research literature. Further, this paper provides insight into how IPA could inform future research and management of tourism experiences at marine wildlife destinations.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper synthesises learning gained from the natural area tourism and recreation literature that report the application of IPA in MWT and insights from a recent study at the Dolphin Discovery Centre in Bunbury, Western Australia.
Findings
Although currently underutilized in MWT research, IPA is a relatively straightforward, easy to interpret, and, if correctly applied, a powerful tool that managers and researchers can employ to investigate and enhance visitor satisfaction in the short-term and for longer-term sustainability of the industry through visitor-informed tourism management.
Originality/value
Having identified the opportunity to enhance visitor experiences, site management and target species welfare through increased IPA research, this review provides a plain language introduction to the application of IPA and direct access to comprehensible academic discourses and exemplars for the technique. Moreover, in light of increasing tourism demand, IPA can assist in determining management options for the future.
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The evolving visitors' expectations and the unfolding digital transformation compel rethinking on the service offering of museums and cultural institutions. Although…
Abstract
Purpose
The evolving visitors' expectations and the unfolding digital transformation compel rethinking on the service offering of museums and cultural institutions. Although digitalization and people-centeredness are widely exploited to enhance the visiting experience, there is limited evidence of their implications on organizational attractiveness. The article investigates this issue, examining the service attributes that entice visitors.
Design/methodology/approach
The study collected secondary data from the latest census study by the Italian Institute of Statistics on museums and cultural institutions. Two hierarchical regression models have been run on a sample of large publicly owned organizations (n = 312) to identify the service factors that were most effective in attracting Italian and foreign visitors.
Findings
Museums and cultural institutions undergoing a digital transformation were more effective in attracting visitors. The delivery of virtual tours and online events captivated the Italian audience. Foreigners appreciated the opportunity to use applications augmenting the on-site visit.
Practical implications
Digitalization and people-centeredness improve the attractiveness of museums and cultural institutions. Using digital channels to engage visitors fosters their desire to interact with cultural heritage. Furthermore, digitalization enriches the on-site visit, expanding conventional services with virtuality. However, the adverse effects on cultural heritage should be carefully handled.
Originality/value
This study highlights the service attributes that add to the attractiveness of museums and cultural institutions, enabling them to engage visitors and improve the visiting experience.
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