Visitor centres and environmental interpretation: An exploration of the relationships among visitor enjoyment, understanding and mindfulness

Abstract

Environmental interpretation, a key concept in the literature on environmental education, has usually been studied in relation to visitor centres at national parks and historic sites. This article reported a secondary data analysis of material originally collected by the Countryside Commission on 17 British visitor centres. The aims of the current research were to explore more fully the relationships among key variables related to environmental interpretation; namely visitor enjoyment, visitors' information recall, visitor mindfulness and visitors' own beliefs in how much they had learned. Using a series of partial correlation coefficients, it was concluded that the link between visitors' information recall and enjoyment across all the centres was minimal, and that this relationship was not being suppressed appreciably by confounding visitor and centre characteristics. Further analyses revealed a moderate positive correlation between visitor enjoyment and mindfulness, thus indicating that visitors were being mentally stimulated by their experience in. a more general way. A multidimensional scaling analysis of visitors' reactions to the 17 centres produced a two-dimensional solution which could be interpreted in terms of the interpretive theme at each centre and the quality and diversity of the displays. Finally, cross-tabulations revealed a relationship between interpretive theme (historic and conservation as opposed to general) and visitors' mindfulness, increased information recall and enhanced perception of how much they had learned.