A number of organizations in cultural tourism have started to explore the use of augmented reality (AR) to enhance visitor experience. While many studies have been conducted to identify adoption criteria of mobile AR applications, research exploring the adoption of augmented reality smart glasses (ARSG) is still limited. This paper contributes to the technology adoption literature by investigating attributes of visitor adoption of ARSG in cultural tourism. Twenty-eight interviews were conducted with visitors to a UK art gallery, where they experienced an ARSG application. Findings inform an ARSG adoption framework that integrates societal impact, perceived benefits, perceived attributes of innovation, and visitor resistance as the main themes of ARSG adoption in cultural tourism.
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This paper is about Grūtas, a Lithuanian park museum near Druskininkai featuring recovered Soviet-era artifacts. This study fills the gap in literature on people's emotions and reactions dealing with an unwanted past, and an undesirable heritage. Visits to sites associated with occupation, death and suffering are considered emotionally laden. Data were collected from visitor comment books employing a qualitative content analysis as well as quantitative data analysis techniques such as word frequency and semantic network analysis. Few studies empirically investigated visitor emotions to “unwanted” heritage sites. This research provides insights into the interpretive complex by discussing the content of visitor comment books. Three hundred and seventy-nine visitor comments from Lithuanians to the Grūtas park museum were examined. Results reveal that visitors experience both negative and positive emotions after visiting the site, such as unpleasantness, discomfort, surprise, admiration and delight. This is the first study to examine visitor's emotions and reactions to the Grūtas park museum, a site related to difficult heritage.
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Cultural tourism is regarded as a key contributor for economic growth in various destinations. While increasing awareness and interest of different cultures play a key role, technology has made information and interaction at these sites more accessible and engaging. An increasing amount of research is being conducted around the potential and implementation of AR and VR technology to enhance the visitor experience. However, limited theoretical knowledge has been developed on how these need to be designed to facilitate forming memorable experiences at cultural tourism sites. This study discusses elements affecting the visitor experience and discusses how AR and VR should be designed to contribute to enhancing the experience and making it memorable from a theoretical perspective. Further research recommendations are outlined that suggest the use of complementing research methodologies to better understand the nature of experiences in order to design AR and VR application more purpose-specifically.
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Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a pattern of alcohol use that involves having trouble controlling drinking behaviour, even when it causes health issues (addiction) or problems functioning in daily (social and professional) life. Moreover, festivals are a common place where large crowds of festival-goers experience challenges refusing or controlling alcohol and substance use. Studies have shown that interventions at festivals are still very problematic. ARise is the first project that wants to help prevent AUD at festivals using Augmented Reality (AR) as a tool to help people, particular festival visitors, to say no to alcohol (and other substances). ARise is based on the on the first Augmented Reality Exposure Therapy (ARET) in the world that we developed for clinical treatment of AUD. It is an AR smartphone driven application in which (potential) visitors are confronted with virtual humans that will try to seduce the user to accept an alcoholic beverage. These virtual humans are projected in the real physical context (of a festival), using innovative AR glasses. Using intuitive phone, voice and gesture interactions, it allows users to personalize the safe experience by choosing different drinks and virtual humans with different looks and levels of realism. ARET has been successfully developed and tested on (former) AUD patients within a clinical setting. Research with patients and healthcare specialists revealed the wish to further develop ARET as a prevention tool to reach people before being diagnosed with AUD and to extend the application for other substances (smoking and pills). In this project, festival visitors will experience ARise and provide feedback on the following topics: (a) experience, (b) awareness and confidence to refuse alcohol drinks, (c) intention to use ARise, (d) usability & efficiency (the level of realism needed), and (e) ideas on how to extend ARise with new substances.
Events play an increasingly big role in our society. Whereas events were mainly considered entertainment in the past, the social function of events is becoming more and more apparent, in particular, in the field of social bonding and in creating a feeling of solidarity.During an event, visitors identify with a theme or topic, and interact with each other about it. Thanks to social media, they can continue these interactions online, which leads to a hybrid network of individuals sharing the same interests. Eventually, this may lead to forming new communities, who communicate with each other both online and offline. However, it is not clear yet how exactly these new communities are being created.This PhD research studies the online and offline interaction rituals of various events and online communities. Through interviews and participating observations at events such as Redhead Days and the Elfia fantasy event, processes are mapped out that result in forming communities at and around events.Partner: Tilburg University
This project aims to develop a measurement tool to assess the inclusivity of experiences for people with varying challenges and capabilities on the auditory spectrum. In doing so, we performed an in-depth exploration of scientific literature and findings from previous projects by Joint Projects. Based on this, we developed an initial conceptual model that focuses on sensory perception, emotion, cognition, and e[ort in relation to hearing and fatigue. Within, this model a visitor attraction is seen as an “experienscape” with four key elements: content, medium, context, and individual. In co-creative interviews with experts by experience with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum, they provided valuable insights that led to a significant expansion of this initial model. This was a relevant step, as in the scientific and professional literature, little is known about the leisure experiences of people with troubled hearing. For example, personal factors such as a person’s attitude toward their own hearing loss and the social dynamics within their group turned out to greatly influence the experience. The revised model was then applied in a case study at Apenheul, focusing on studying differences in experience of their gorilla presentation amongst people with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum.Societal issueThe Netherlands is one of the countries in Europe with the highest density of visitor attractions. Despite this abundance, many visitor attractions are not fully accessible to everyone, particularly to visitors with disabilities who sometimes are not eligible to ride due to safety concerns, yet when eligible generally still encounter numerous barriers. Accessibility of visitor attractions can be approached in various ways. However, because the focus often lies on operational and technical aspects (e.g., reducing stimuli at certain times of the day by turning o[ music, o[ering alternative wheelchair entrances), strategic and community-focused approaches are often overlooked. More importantly, there is also a lack of attention to the experience of visitors with disabilities. This becomes apparent from several studies from Joint Projects, where visitor attractions are being visited together with experts by experience with various disabilities. Nevertheless, experience is often being regarded as the 'core product' of the leisure sector. The right to meet, discover, develop, relax and thus enjoy this core product is hindered for many people with disabilities due to a lack of knowledge, inaccessibility (physical, digital, social, communicative as well as financial) and discrimination in society. Additionally, recreation entrepreneurs still face a significant gap in reaching the potential market of guests with disabilities and their networks. Thus, despite the numerous initiatives in the leisure sector aimed at improving accessibility on technical and operational fronts, often people with disabilities are still not being able to experience the same kind of enjoyment as those without. These observations form the pressing impetus for initiating the current research project, tapping into the numerous opportunities for learning, development and growth on making leisure offer more inclusive.Benefit to societyIn total, the current project approach comes with a number of enrichments in terms of both knowledge and methodology: a mixed-methods approach that allows for comparing data from different sources to obtain a more complete picture of the experience; a methodological co-design process that honours the 'nothing about us without us' principle; and benchmarking for a group (i.e., people with challenges on the auditory spectrum) that despite the size of its population has thus far mostly been overlooked.
