Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past

Visitors and Non-visitors: approaches and outcomes of audience research in the last decades

A review by Dr Georgios Alexopoulos, IPUP Research Associate

Overview

This review of selected studies from the 1980s and 1990s (see below) will look at certain methodologies employed in audience research and will outline some of the relevant outcomes that relate to a question of major importance: why so some people not visit museums and heritage places? The papers selected for this review cover some of the most important – but certainly not all – individual studies undertaken by academics, cultural institutions, and various heritage practitioners. However, the following articles reflect the direction of museum audience research (at least in the English-speaking world) and highlight certain points and issues that should inform and constitute a point of reference for current and further research in the field.

Outline

The first part of this review will look at two papers written by Marilyn G. Hood, a museum consultant in the USA who specialises in audience research and development. The first paper, “Staying away: why people choose not to visit museums”, was published in 1983 in the journal Museum News and is based on the results of a survey that formed part of the author’s PhD research at Ohio State University. The second paper, “After 70 years of audience research, what have we learned? Who comes to museums, who does not, and why?”, published a decade later, is a chapter from an edited volume derived from the 1992 conference of the Visitor Studies Association. Both papers offer a North American perspective of audience research and reflect the discourse dominant until the early 1980s.

The second part of this review focuses on two papers published in the early 1990s in the journal Museum Management and Curatorship that discuss the outcomes of specific visitor surveys in the UK. The first paper, “Factors Influencing Museum Visits: An Empirical Evaluation of Audience Selection”, was written by David R. Prince, founder of Prince Research Consultants and Visiting Lecturer at the Universities of Birmingham and Gothenburg, and the second paper, “Perceptual Deterrents to Visiting Museums and Other Heritage Attractions”, by the late Richard Prentice, professor of heritage interpretation and cultural tourism at the University of Sunderland. The third part of this review discusses a paper, “Visitors: who does, who doesn’t and why”, published in the Museum News journal in 1998 by John H. Falk, Sea Grant Professor of Free-Choice Learning at Oregon State University and Director Emeritus of the Institute for Learning Innovation, in Annapolis, Maryland.

“Staying away: why people choose not to visit museums” by Marilyn G. Hood

This article discusses the results of a research project conducted between 1980-81 in collaboration with the Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, Ohio). Surveys of this period (early 1980s) in USA and Canada had demonstrated that non-visitors were: likely to belong to the upper education, occupation and income groups; younger than the population in general; active in other community and leisure activities. Summarising 60 years of literature in museum studies, leisure science, sociology, psychology and consumer behaviour Hood identified the following six criteria of a desirable leisure experience (p. 51):

  1. being with people or social interaction
  2. doing something worthwhile
  3. feeling comfortable and at ease in one’s surroundings
  4. having a challenge of new experiences
  5. having an opportunity to learn
  6. participating actively

Consequently, the first aim of the study was to determine how important these six attributes were to respondents. The second aim of the research project, as discussed in this paper, was to ascertain the preferences of the respondents for certain leisure activities and places. The data was obtained through 502 telephone interviews of residents across the Toledo metropolitan area through a 20-minute questionnaire (of 12 pages). The results indicated that whereas frequent visitors valued all six criteria (with an emphasis on 2, 4, 5) non-visitors were more drawn to leisure activities that emphasised opportunities for social interaction, feeling comfortable and active participation (criteria 1, 3, 6).

According to Hood the results of the research project show that the categorisation of the audiences merely into ‘participants’ and ‘nonparticipants’ is incorrect and they instead suggest the distinction of the museum clientele should be threefold: frequent participants, occasional participants and nonparticipants. The author urged museum professionals to focus on the psychographic characteristics of both current and potential visitors and particularly their ‘values, attitudes, perceptions, interests, expectations, satisfactions’ (p. 51). This is seen as a vital step towards identifying how participants and non-participants differ in their expectations and how the latter, as ‘elusive audiences’, could be better reached. Hood argues that in order to reach new audiences – namely the occasional participants and the nonparticipants – museum professionals must appeal to what satisfies their criteria of a desirable leisure experience. What’s more, the author also stressed that leisure choices may be correlated with, but are not determined by, demographics. An interesting point to consider from this research is also the recognition that people make choices about how they will use their leisure time and energy and that before selecting they consider a range of competing alternatives.

“After 70 years of audience research, what have we learned? Who comes to museums, who does not, and why?” by Marilyn G. Hood

The second paper by Marilyn Hood makes a reference to the same research project on museum visitors and non-visitors but centres around the importance of the outcomes of audience research conducted from the early twentieth century and onwards. The author emphasises in particular the relevance of post-war leisure and communications research as well as the contributions of museology research from 1950-1969 and 1969-1979 respectively.

Hood criticised the ignorance of certain museum professionals towards the existing museological (or museum-related) literature. The seriousness of this phenomenon is very strongly underlined (p. 16): ‘If medicine ignored its literature the way this field has, we would still be bleeding patients and operating without anaesthesia!’. The author demonstrates that museum professionals had been aware of the problems relating to visitor motivations and satisfaction already from the first decades of the twentieth century. Going back to the six criteria of a desirable leisure experience Hood shows that the social interaction and feeling comfortable aspects (criteria 1 and 3) had been recognised as paramount in previous studies dating back to the 1920s and 1930s. Leisure research from the 1950s and onwards revealed that choice is a crucial factor in analysing non-visitors to museums as the latter ‘choose not to come if they find the rewards don’t meet their expectations or are less than they can attain in alternative offerings’ (p. 19). On the other hand, communications research, particularly persuasion techniques, indicated that the habit of museum-going can be considerably influenced when museum outreach efforts employ diffusion and personal influence techniques which are based on “word-of-mouth” communication. In the same manner, museology research from 1950 to 1969 identified the importance of investigating the motivations underlying museum visitation while leisure research from the late 1960s and onwards provided a theoretical model of visitor behaviour that was lacking in the museological field. Hood emphasises particularly the contribution of leisure science for considering the broader social implications of museums: their role as social institutions and the museum visit as a social or leisure activity.

Although Hood’s analysis does not cover the literature from the 1980s and onwards it could be argued that this article’s main point holds still true for contemporary museum and heritage professionals. This is the fact that only multidisciplinary approaches that employ perspectives, methodologies, techniques and practical outcomes from a wide range of fields can provide answers to the museum audience questions and dilemmas. This certainly implies that existing research should be published and easily accessible to museum professionals so that efforts are not duplicated and good practice can be usefully disseminated. As museums often still fail to put their message across in terms that are meaningful to the non-visitor (p. 17) adopting a holistic approach to audience research and development and placing an emphasis on infrequent visitors are without doubt vital priorities of successful public communication and engagement.

“Factors Influencing Museum Visits: An Empirical Evaluation of Audience Selection” by David R. Prince

The data analysed by David Prince in this paper was derived from a commissioned research project that focused on museum visitors and non-visitors in the county of Lincolnshire in 1988 (Museum Lincs). The survey – the first of its kind undertaken in the UK on a county-wide basis – consisted of a sample of 2277 questionnaire-based interviews that took place at 17 locations in the county (7 museums and 10 on-street locations) with statistical techniques employed for assessing association and significance within the responses. At the core of this project was the exploration of the perception of museums as social institutions by the public and Prince’s paper thus considers the nature of the audience selection process and the circumstances under which decisions to visit a museum are made and acted upon.

The analysis draws on behavioural psychology theory – a theory explored and applied to the museum context by the author in his doctoral thesis and presented in previous publications (Prince 1983 and 1985). Prince argues that the selection-attitude defining whether a person will visit or not visit a museum is dependent, to a great extent, on two psychological elements that impact behaviour (p. 150): ‘a cognitive element of what the place/visit is’ and ‘an effective component that assigns value to the understanding of the place/visit’. Therefore, the perceptual stance that determines the choice of visiting is influenced, among other things, by the provision of information, by past experience, and by the existing image and perception of the museum. As a result, the author maintains that both visitors and non-visitors to museums or heritage sites tend to demonstrate sustained patterns of behaviour (behavioural consistency) in their choice of use of leisure time (termed here as non-obligated time). Prince consequently acknowledges the impact of socio-demographic factors on museum visiting patterns but stresses that for understanding the latter, attitudes and life-values are even more useful analytical devices.

The remaining sections of this paper present the outcomes of the Museum Lincs survey in various issues which, according to the author, testify to the existence of certain shared underlying perspectives between visitors and non-visitors with regard the nature, social role and characteristics of museums. The results showed that respondents from the salaried middle-class social group were over-represented as museum visitors as opposed to working-class respondents (in turn over-represented as non-visitors): both groups self-defined themselves as regular and infrequent visitors respectively. The survey also demonstrated the validity of the behavioural consistency theory, in that museum visitors revealed their tendency to visit other heritage-related sites that were perceived to offer similar conceptual benefits (castles, historic houses etc), something that was not expressed by non-visitors. The assessment of the institutional image assigned by the museums further revealed that historic houses and stately homes were considered by the majority of respondents as the closest images to a museum. Therefore non-visitors to museums emerged also as likely non-visitors to other heritage sites and, according to Prince, this proves that new initiatives for the presentation of institutional images should be considered by museum professionals. Finally an inquiry into public perceptions towards museums also revealed that committed museum visitors were more likely to hold positive images of the museum as an institution.

“Perceptual Deterrents to Visiting Museums and Other Heritage Attractions” by Richard Prentice

In this paper Richard Prentice presented the results of a survey conducted in 1992 and 1993 that aimed to provide insights into possible attributes of deterrence to museum and heritage visiting. The survey involved 1959 interviews of residents in three British cities: Swansea, Durham, and Edinburgh. The interviews were undertaken in city centre street locations, using a closed-ended questionnaire. Drawing on leisure science literature and marketing research, the author sought to investigate the extent to which socio-demographics and participation and non-participation impacted on the creation of perceptual constraints on heritage visiting.

The results of the afore-mentioned survey indicated that the British public ascribed to museums and other historic monuments predominantly an educational function (followed by pleasure of viewing and information) but nevertheless museums were perceived as distinctive from other forms of built heritage. Respondents from higher social classes tended to favour educational, conservation, and information functions showing that this dominant educational function could act as a deterrent to a significant segment of the public. While age related differences implied that museums should adopt different promotion strategies for different age groups, Prentice also stressed that the perceived functions of museums and other heritage attractions also varied according to the three enthusiasm indicator categories (‘enthusiasts’, ‘average consumers’, ‘non-enthusiasts’) derived from reported visits to nine attractions specific to each of the three cities. Indeed, heritage attraction enthusiasts (as opposed to non-enthusiasts) as well as higher social class respondents, were the least likely to see museums as boring, expensive, uninteresting to children, or mainly as places to visit when on holiday. Overall, the author’s survey revealed that a heritage enthusiast ‘is likely to be of higher social class, older and car borne, and may have children living at home’ whereas a non-enthusiast ‘is likely to be of lower social class (or a student), young and unlikely to have a child living at home’ (p. 276). One of the main points raised by Prentice is that deterrents to museum visiting should not be inferred from visitor profiles but rather from potential visitors (the non-visitors).

“Visitors: who does, who doesn’t and why” by John H. Falk

In his paper John Falk outlines a framework for describing visitors and non-visitors and the reasons why these two types of audience attend or abstain from museums. The data informing this framework has been derived from an analysis of previous audience research literature as well as the author’s personal research and experience in the field with a particular emphasis in the context of the USA. One of the principal arguments of this article is that museums of the 21st century – already placed within a “learning society” at the age of information – will need to struggle in order to survive and successfully maintain and enlarge ‘their share of the leisure audience’ (p. 42). The future implications of the afore-mentioned argument for museums are presented by Falk through the brief examination of four types of variables that are deemed as very crucial in defining museum-going: demographic, psychographic, personal and cultural history, and environmental variables.

In terms of the demographic variables, the author underlines that existing research has made a strong case for the fact that museum-going is affected by education, income, occupation, race, ethnicity, and age. Museum-goers overall are indicated by researchers to belong to the better educated, more affluent, and higher earning segments of the American public. However, Falk acknowledges that human behaviour, including museum-going, is a complex subject and that measurements of demographic categories alone cannot offer any insights into understanding visitors and particularly non-visitors. In discussing the psychographic variables a strong emphasis is placed on the work of Marilyn Hood and particularly her identification of the criteria of a desirable leisure experience. With regard to the personal and cultural history variables, Falk stresses that early childhood leisure activities influence adult leisure behaviours and that adult museum-goers are particularly influenced by childhood visits to museums with their parents. Finally, among the environmental variables that affect museum visiting (such as advertising and promotional campaigns, word-of-mouth recommendations from family and friends, time and money) it is argued that perceived value (finding a museum visit a satisfying experience) is perhaps the most crucial. Although all of these four variables are important and worthy of consideration the author very correctly states that none of the four types of variables can provide a full explanation of why people visit or don’t visit museums.

In conclusion, Falk predicts that museum attendance in the USA will continue in the first half of the 21st century but stresses that a new middle class – that would include the minority populations of Hispanic, African-American and Asian people – will be playing a vital role in the category of museum visitors. He also predicts for the same period that museum-goers will still be characterised by the three “desirable leisure experience” criteria identified by Marilyn Hood (opportunity to learn, desire for challenging new experiences, doing something worthwhile) as well as by a perception of learning as a lifelong activity.

Analysis

Museum and heritage professionals, particularly from the 1950s and onwards, have strived to increase their audiences and have often been concerned with the segments of the public who choose not to visit their museums and heritage sites. Nevertheless, studies on ‘visitors’ and ‘non-visitors’ that have aimed to go further than providing demographic characteristics only started to gain currency in the last three decades. Visitor motivations as well as barriers or deterrents that influence the decisions of non-visitors (often also termed as ‘non-users’, ‘non-goers’, ‘non-participants’, ‘non-consumers’ or ‘potential visitors’) have featured very strongly in the wider heritage literature (which is predominantly Anglophone). All of the papers presented in this review have demonstrated that seeking a more representative audience base is a complex issue that needs to be addressed by museums if they wish to continue their function for the benefit of the public. Museum and heritage professionals need to be aware of the power and importance derived from a good understanding of visitors and non-visitors. This indeed constitutes a pressing requirement particularly within the current international and national socio-political and economic climate (i.e. changing government policies and priorities, the pressures of the leisure market and/or heritage industry, the tough competition for the allocation of funds in the broader cultural sector). Therefore, this collection of articles provides ample food for thought and constitutes essential reading for any reader (student, heritage professional or academic) wanting to gain a good overview of where audience research on museum visitors and non-visitors has headed by the end of the twentieth century.

References

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