Visitor Service Quality Attributes at Australian Botanic Gardens: Their use in predicting behavioural intentions

Abstract

Marketing and management literature is awash with discussions about competing predictive models of leisure behaviour. Most of these include the concepts of service quality and satisfaction. However, related studies of visitors to botanic gardens have not been as well represented, nor are they evident in the mainstream leisure and tourism literature. This lack of literature is surprising because botanic gardens in Australia are demanding considerable financial commitments from governments so as to provide the twin roles of conserving and displaying biological specimens, and providing public education and recreation opportunities. Much of the literature on service quality has been well established and driven by the study of commercial transactions. Little is available that deals with visitor behaviour in the public leisure domain at venues such as botanic gardens. This paper presents findings from a survey of visitors to botanic gardens in six Australian capital cities. Perceptions of service quality plus demographic profiles and measures of behavioural intentions post‐visit were collected from more than 1000 adult visitors. Exploratory factor analysis of 23 visitor‐defined attributes of service quality was used to identify underlying dimensions of service quality. Hierarchical linear regression was then used to identify the significant predictive effects of visitor service quality for overall satisfaction and behavioural intentions after the visit. The findings were used to develop a four‐factor model of visitor service quality for visitors to botanic gardens. Furthermore, there appeared to be significant and meaningful predictive power of visitors’ intended behaviour based on their ratings of visitor service quality attributes. For garden management staffs, implications included the need to encourage the continued engagement with social researchers to complement their role as scientific collections managers as well as visitor managers. For researchers, implications include the need to consider a refined concept and measurement of service quality for public, non‐profit organisations providing popular leisure experiences and visitor benefits.