We describe an electronic guidebook prototype and report on a study of its use in a historic house. Visitors were given a choice of information delivery modes, and generally preferred audio played through speakers. In this delivery mode, visitors assigned the electronic guidebook a conversational role, e.g., it was granted turns in conversation, it introduced topics of conversation, and visitor...

We have proposed Meta-Museum as a new knowledge sharing environment where experts and novices can communicate with each other with agent support. Museum exhibitions are thought to be well organized representations of the expert knowledge of curators, but they are just one example of structures of knowledge among many possibilities, given to museum visitors in a one-sided way. Therefore, traditi...

Defining a physical or virtual space as a museum, seems to have clear implications on visitors’ behaviour and particularly learning behaviour. Past research shows that it is essential to identify different museum types and consider their similarities, differences and special features in order to be able to make valid research hypotheses. However, visitors would not always define certain types o...

Noise impacts resources and visitor experience in many protected natural areas, and visitors can be the dominant source of noise. This experimental study tested the efficacy and acceptability of signs asking visitors to be quiet at Muir Woods National Monument, California. Signs declaring a "quiet zone" (at the park's Cathedral Grove) or a "quiet day" (throughout the park) were posted on a rand...

The advent of location-based technologies deployed in protected areas provides both visitors and managers of such areas with new opportunities. In this paper we investigate the potential for mining individual tracks of visitors’ geospatial lifelines to both extract information describing aggregated patterns of group behaviour and characterise individual actions. Methods to spatio-temporally clu...

Nature based tourism products offer valuable experience to visitors which can only be appreciated or stimulated using sensory elements. Visual, sound, taste, smell, touch and mobility are sensory elements that are able to enhance visitors’ experience in any particular destination. However, some destinations might not provide all the elements. Therefore this study’s objective is to assess the ro...

Many studies have investigated personalized information presentation in the context of mobile museum guides. In order to provide such a service, information about museum visitors has to be collected and visitors have to be monitored and modelled in a non-intrusive manner. This can be done by using known museum visiting styles to classify the visiting style of visitors as they start their visit....

Visitors to zoos can be a source of potential disturbance and stress to some captive, nonhuman animals in the wild. To determine the influence of visitor presence on captive bison (Bos gaurus gaurus), the study analyzed the behavior of 4 individuals at the Arignar Anna Zoological Park, India. The study often observed the behavior of the animals on visitor-present days and on days when visitors ...

Executive Summary One thousand telephone interviews were conducted in the six western Washington counties of Clallam, King, Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston. Two research questions addressed in the telephone survey included: 1) the amount of spatial and temporal displacement due to crowding at Mount Rainier and Olympic national parks; and 2) the differences between displaced and non-disp...

The paper focuses on investigating factors impacting visitors’ loyal behaviour and factor analysis of push pull motivations to a botanic park. To do so, the research is divided into two phases that are qualitative quantitative. In phase, in-depth interviews used gather initial insights quantitative survey taken collect data then carried out group similar variables together for identification di...