Unlike schools, which have age-graded classes and compulsory attendance .... the best way to predict visitor behavior is to know more about the visitors as ... THE STUDY. Methods-A sample of visitors to the Florida State Museum of.
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Predicting Visitor Behavior JOHN H. FALK SMITHSONIAN OFFICE OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH WASHINGTON, D.C. JOHN J . KORAN, JR. UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA LYNN D. DIERKlNG SMITHSONIAN OFFICE OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH WASHINGTON, D. C. LEWIS DREBLOW UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA
Every year, millions of people stream through museums -young people and old people -people with varying degrees of education, people alone and in groups. How can museums best serve this diverse audience? One kind of service that museums try to provide is education. Unlike schools, which have age-graded classes and compulsory attendance, museums come face to face with the realities of “freechoice” learning. These realities ensure that predicting what and how visitors learn- let alone ifthey learn -will be very difficult. One useful index of visitor learning is visitor behavior (cf. Falk, 1983a). Hence, predicting visitor behavior in a museum becomes an important issue. How predictable is museum behavior? Despite a great increase in research in museums over the years, very few of the published studies are genuinely predictive. Most of the studies conducted in the last fifty years have been either descriptive or evaluative (cf. Falk, 1982, for a discussion of research vs. evaluation). Specific museum-based research designed to predict visitor behavior is generally scarce (Robinson, 1928; Screven, 1974; Lakota,
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1975; Falk and Balling, 1982) or suffers from misinterpreted data (cf. Falk, 1983b). Consequently, generalizations about museum visitors are difficult to make. In fact, some might even venture to say that museum visitors, as an undifferentiated mass, do not exhibit any clearly observable patterns of behavior. To a certain extent, one’s willingness to assert the degree to which visitors behave predictably depends on one’s psychological and museological philosophy. At least three perspectives seem particularly relevant. Two of these are extremely popular views of how museums and visitors interact, and the third -though less well-known and championed -merits consideration. The first orientation we will call the Exhibit Perspective; the second, the Visitor Perspective; and the third, the Setting Perspective. All three orientations begin from different premises, and -under the appropriate circumstances -all three make accurate predictions of human behavior. Hence, the question posed and the study described in this paper are not intended to prove or disprove any one of these perspectives in the broadest sense. Rather, this paper should be taken as an attempt to determine in a narrow sense which perspective allows the most practical solution to a practical question: Can museum professionals in any way accurately predict the general behavior of visitors in their museums? We provide here: (1) a brief overview of each perspective and its implications for predicting museum visitor behavior, (2) a description of the research methods employed to help answer the question, and (3) the tentative conclusions we have reached based upon our investigation. OVERVIEW
Exhibit Perspective-The Exhibit Perspective assumes that the dominant determinant of visitor behavior is the quality and content of the exhibit. This view holds that museums can control visitor behavior through the manipulation of such exhibit elements as visual attractiveness, length of labels, intensity of illumination, size of typeface, and participatory vs. passive design. The concept of exhibit “holding power” and “attractingpower” (Robinson, 1928; Screven, 1974) developed out of attempts to measure the success of an exhibit’s effectiveness vis-i-vis the visitor. Screven (1974) describes at length methods for enhancing these dimensions through various display and reinforcement procedures. The same idea viewed from the visitor’s eyes would emphasize elements like attention and curiosity. Koran and Koran (1983) have suggested that these factors are critical for learning in all types of exhibit settings. The Exhibit Perspective has dominated the museum field for many years. It predicts that an objective measure of exhibit quality could be defined and applied to all exhibits of a
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museum; these measures would correlate very highly with what visitors actually attend to. Visitor Perspective -The Visitor Perspective suggests that, although exhibits are important in determining visitor behavior, the visitor’s past experience and interests are more important. Visitors come to the museum with an agenda (e.g., Balling et al., in review) and prior knowledge (cf. Gennaro, Stoneberg, and Tanck, 1983); in other words, they come with a legacy of interests, concerns, and intellectual capacities. An extremely dazzling display may attract visitors’ attention, but if they care not a twit about the subject matter, they will probably not stop and look at the exhibit. Families may be an exception to this (cf. Lakota, 1976). The visitor-as-shopper metaphor (Falk, 1983b) reflects this view when it describes the individual with a penchant for Pleistocene fossils who enters the museum and makes a beeline for that exhibit, ignoring everything else on the way (much as a determined shopper in search of an umbrella might behave in a retail store). Any objective measure of exhibit attractiveness or holding power would likely be irrelevant in this instance. This view suggests that the best way to predict visitor behavior is to know more about the visitors as individuals. Thus, X% of the visitors would be most attracted to exhibit type A, while Y % would not show interest in A or in B. Setting Perspective -The Setting Perspective takes a more holistic view. It assumes that behavior is determined, in large measure, by large-scale social and environmental factors rather than by individual differences or the quality of any individual exhibit or display. From this perspective, the museum might be viewed as a “behavior setting” (cf. Barker and Wright, 1955; Barker, 1968), a setting in which human behavior is quite constrained and predictable for social and physical reasons. For example, despite the diversity of people entering a movie theater at any given time during any film,well over 90% of the people behave in very similar and predictable ways. At a minimum, people are seated, facing forward, attending to the movie, and even thinking and feeling closely related thoughts and emotions. This perspective would suggest that museum visitors-due to a combination of shared expectations, enforced “acceptable”museum behavior, and the general physical layout of the space -behave in well-defined and predictable patterns, regardless of exhibit content and design or different experiences and knowledge. A study by Koran et al. (in preparation) on the effects of visitor modeling behavior could be viewed as reinforcing this view. Thus, which exhibits visitors attend to may be primarily a consequence of such apparently arbitrary factors as proximity to
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an entrance or restroom, whether other people have stopped or not, and whether an exhibit is on the left or right side of a hallway. THE STUDY
Methods-A sample of visitors to the Florida State Museum of Natural History (FSM) was selected at random. Visitors were met within 10 seconds of entering the Museum and asked if they objected to being tracked through the Museum for the purpose of a “class project.” Acceptance was over 98 %, and 69 subjects were tracked. Only 15% of the visitors in the sample were children. In order to reduce variability, only the 60 visitors above the age of 16 were included in the final analysis. Two subjects who spent less than three minutes in the museum were also dropped. The age range of the 58 adults was 12%, 16-20years; 28%, 21-30years; 35%, 3 1 4 y e a r s ; 17%,41-60 years; and 8 % , over 60 years. Of the subjects tracked, 90% were part of a social group, with equal numbers in groups of 2, 3,4, and more than 4 people. Roughly half were first-time visitors. Most people, 68.3 % , were part of family groups; the others were in peer groups. Subjects were observed from the moment they entered the Museum until the time they left. Data were collected on all days of the week, but close to 85% of data collection occurred on the weekends (peak visitation time at FSM and virtually all museums). Observers were six graduate students who were participating in a museum education course taught in the 1983 spring semester at the University of Florida in Gainesville. The observation instrument was based on instruments previously developed by Falk (1983a, 1983~).These rely upon a time-driven recording of visitor locus on attention selected from a set of possible choices. Nonverbal locus of attention has been shown to correlate very highly with cognition (Falk, 1983a). A total of five loci of attention was possible: Attention to Exhibit, Attention to Setting, Attention to Own Social Group, Attention to Other People, and Attention to Self. Every five seconds, a judgment was made as to the dominant locus of attention and recorded. In the event of ambiguity, a “Can’t Tell” category was scored. The instrument was piloted, and a list of behaviors under each category was generated. For example, behaviors coded as Attention to Exhibit included pointing to an object in an exhibit or reading a label. Looking at the ceiling lights or down at the carpeted floor were coded as Attending to Setting. After training, agreement among raters was 93%. Results-For each subject, the 36 “scores” over a three-minute
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interval were pooled, and a percent "locus of attention" was calculated. These numbers were in turn summed and averaged across all subjects.
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Figure 1. Mean percent "locusof attention"by three-minute intervals. I = Attention to Exhibit; 3 = Attention to Setting; 5 = Attention to Self; 7 = Attention to Own Social Group; 9 = Attention to Other People; and O= Can't tell. (See text for explanation.)
Figure 1 summarizes these data. Attention to Exhibit is significantly greater than all other loci (p < .01) across time periods 1-20. Attention to Social Group and Attention to Setting are not significantly different from each other (p > .lo), but both are significantly greater than Attention to Self and Attention to Other People across these same intervals (p < .Ol). Very little attrition of subjects occurred through the first 10 intervals (30 minutes)- 15.5%. By interval 15 (45 minutes after entering), only half of the visitors remained. By interval 20 (one hour after entering), only 20.7% of the subjects were still in the museum. DISCUSSION
The behavior of adults at FSM over the initial 30 to 45 minutes of their visits appears to be constant and relatively predictable. Initially, visitors are somewhat disoriented; they spend the first minute or two
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finding direction. This task is usually conducted in consultation with the people with whom they enter the museum; occasionally, it involves asking a stranger (e.g., guard or staff person). However, once the exhibits are found, a high degree of attention is focused on them. This high level of attention appears to be quite constant and persists, at FSM, for about 30 minutes. It is worth noting that over this time period, the typical visitor at FSM encounters-in a very rigid sequence-a walk-through facsimile of a cave, a series of glassed-in display cases with stuffed birds and Indian basketry (a “temporary” exhibit), a walk-through forest (with headsets available), an interactive series of exhibits on animal behavior and reproduction, and, eventually, a “hands-on”Object Gallery. It was not possible from the data recorded to discern any difference in attention to exhibits as a function of exhibit presentation- passive vs. interactive or cases vs. a walk-through facsimile of reality. After 30 to 45 minutes, “museum fatigue” seems to set in. Attention to Exhibits rapidly drops to a lower plateau, and Attention to Setting increases. The primary change in visitor behavior during the observations was a change from moving slowly from exhibit to exhibit and reading labels to “cruising” through the halls, stopping occasionally and only very selectively. This would be characterized as a change from a “learning in the museum” mode to a “seeing the museum” mode. The constant 15% of Attention to Own Social Group is interesting. A follow-up study by Falk (in preparation) on visitors to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., revealed the same rate and same constancy during the visit for Attention to Own Social Group. Several other investigators have pointed out the social nature of museums (e.g., Diamond, 1980; Rosenfeld, 1979). Both Attention to Self and Attention to Other People were virtually nonexistent. In a social environment, becoming totally immersed in one’s own person is not a common or socially acceptable behavior. Contrary to Rosenfeld‘s (1979) observations that “people watching” was a major activity at a zoo, there was very little attending to other visitors at FSM. This finding may not be as discrepant as it might at first appear, since there were relatively small numbers of visitors at the museum. Roughly 75% of the observations were made when the museum was rated by the observers as “somewhat crowded or less, and nearly 50%were made when the museum was rated as some degree of “empty.” This would, of course, artificially depress this category. Falk‘s follow-up to this study (in preparation) conducted at the Smithsonian (where crowds number in the tens of thousands on weekends) tends to support Rosenfeld’s findings rather than the FSM results. Certainly, one could argue that the methodology could have affected
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these results. Visitors were asked permission to cooperate, but- as indicated- most agreed (98 %). In most instances, visitors became so involved with their visit -particularly if they had children- that they seemed oblivious to the coder. It is possible, however, that observation had an effect, but in what direction would be hard to predict. As in any study, the instrumentation also had a bias. The choice of the categories and appropriate behaviors could have influenced the outcome. It is important to note that the instrument yielded comparable results when data were collected in two very different museums. This reinforces our notion that museum visitors -due to shared expectations, enforced “acceptable” museum behavior, and the general physical layout of the museum space-behave in fairly well-defined and predictable patterns. CONCLUSIONS
The data suggest that adult visitors to FSM allocated their attention in a consistent pattern. Visitors spent the first few minutes orienting themselves, the next half-hour intently attending to exhibits, and the remaining 15 to 30 minutes “cruising”through the balance of the museum, stopping occasionally to look carefully at some of the exhibits. This behavior pattern appears to be constant across subjects, exhibit format, and exhibit content. Of the three perspectives outlined earlier, the Setting Perspective emerges as most consistently fitting the data. If exhibit quality were most important, one would expect to see consistent peaks and valleys in the Attention to Exhibit data, corresponding to places where visitors encountered particularly good or bad exhibits. Proponents of the primacy of exhibits as influences on visitor behavior have suggested that exhibit design determines “attracting” and ”holding power.” Although this is likely true in a fine-grained sense, it does not clearly emerge as a dominant variable in the coarsegrained view provided by this study. Specifically, the data suggest that clusters of “badexhibits (bad from the point of view of attracting and holding power) placed close to the entrance (e.g., temporary exhibits) received more attention than “good”exhibits located towards the rear of the Museum (e.g., Object Gallery). The data further suggest that most visitors came with a mental set to look at exhibits rather than to learn about fossils or learn about mesic hammocks. They looked at exhibits until they got tired and/or bored; for most visitors, these reactions occurred at about the same time. Although all visitors were clearly unique individuals, their behavior did not appear to be overwhelmingly idiosyncratic. Viewed as a whole, visitors behaved in a normal (in a statistical sense) rather than a random way. If the Visitor Perspective were most predictive,
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Attention to Exhibit would have had an extremely high variance, reflecting the unique nature of each visitor's likes and dislikes. Even though the mean might appear to be constant across time (e.g., the curves shown in Figure l), they would not have been statistically significant because of this variability. (Note: These conclusions were made possible due to the tight correlation between visitors' time in the Museum and the exhibits they encountered at FSM.) Perhaps the most important conclusion that this study affords is that visitors to museums, despite their heterogeneity, may behave in reasonably predictable patterns -patterns over which museum professionals have some control but perhaps not as much as they think they have. The better we understand what controls these behaviors, the easier it will be for us to provide the best possible experience for our visitors. REFERENCES
Balling, J. B., Falk, J. H., and Aronson, R. (in review). "Pre-trip Programs: An Exploration of Their Effects on Learning from a Single-visit Field Trip to a Zoological Park." Science Education. Barker, R. G., and Wright, H. F. (1955). Midwest and Its Children. New York: Harper and Row. Barker, R. G. (1968). Ecological Psychology. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press. Diamond, J. (1980) The Ethology of Teaching: A Perspectivefrom Observations of Families in Science Centers. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (unpublished). Falk, J. H., and Balling, J. D. (1982). 'The Field Trip Milieu: Leanung and Behavior as a Function of Contextual Events." Journal of Educational Research 7611: 22-28. Falk, J. H. (1983a). "Time and Behavior as Predictors of Learning." Science Education 6712: 267-276. . (1983b). "The Use of Time as a Measure of Visitor Behavior and Exhibit Effectiveness."Roundtable Reports: 7he Journal ofMuseum Education 714: 10-13. . (1983~)."A Cross-cultural Investigation of the Novel Field Trip Phenomenon: National Museum of Natural History, New Delhi, India." Curator 2614: 3 15-325. ~. (in preparation) "Visitor Locus of Attention: The National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D. C ." Gennaro, E., Stoneberg, S. A., and Tanck, S. (1984). "Chance or the Prepared Mind?"In S. K. Nichols, M. Alexander, and K. Yellis (Eds.)Museum Education Anthology: Perspectives on Informal Learning. Museum Education Roundtable, Washington, D. C. pp. 201-205. Koran, J. J., and Koran, M. L. (1984). "The Roles of Attention and Curiosity in Museum Learning." In S. K. Nichols, M. Alexander, and K. Yellis (Eds.) Musewn Education Anthology: Perspectives on Informal Learning. Museum Education Roundtable, Washington, D.C. pp. 205-213.
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Koran, J. J . , Dierking, L. D., Lehman, J. R., and Koran, M. L. (in preparation) “The Effects of Modeling Behavior on Visitors to an Informal Setting.” Lakota, R. A. (1976). R e National Museum of Natural History as a Behavioral Environment. Washington, D. C. : Smithsonian Office of Museum Programs (unpublished). Robinson, E. S. (1928). “The Behavior of the Museum Visitor.” Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, New Series, No. 5 . Rosenfeld, S. (1979) “The Context of Informal Learning in Zoos.” Roundtable Reports 412: 1-3, 15, 16. Screven, C. G. (1974). 7he Measurement and Facilimtion of k a m i n g in the Museum Environment: An Experimental Analysis. Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution Press.
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