Museums and Science Centres are informal education environments that intend to engage the visitors with their exhibits. We present an efficient design process that allows an improved working relationship between museum practitioners, exhibition designers, and visitors. We present the principles and a graphical representation based on the Engagement Profile from previous work. Elements of the design process are evaluated using a learning game at the science centre Engineerium. The evaluation is based on a study with over five hundred visitors to the science centre.

In the twenty-first century– an era of increasing domestic and international tourism- there are boundless opportunities to encounter wild animals both in their home countries and ex situ in zoological facilities around the world. Tourism activity– especially at accredited zoos and sanctuaries –plays a crucial role in the conservation of wild animal populations, and influences the welfare of individuals within involved species. Unfortunately, not all zoos and sanctuaries prioritize the conservation and welfare of their animals, such as those who promote irresponsible and mutually-harmful visitor-animal encounters for economic profit. While the relationship between visitors and animals at zoological facilities has shifted over time to match evolving morals and sentiments towards animals, there is still a storied tendency of visitors preferring close encounters with charismatic wild species. Since the 1970s, researchers’ attention has increasingly focused on assessing the influence of the visitor effect, which refers to the impact that viewing, touching, feeding, holding, and riding captive wildlife has on the animals. Many wildlife attractions promote such encounters, despite research suggesting that close interactions with visitors can cause stress and harm to involved species. Such activities are further promoted through the “selfie tourism” phenomenon, in which visitors capture images of themselves in too-close proximity to wild animals to be shared on social media. In this commentary, we consider the challenge of “selfie tourism”, and how it can promote unethical relationships between humans and wildlife and lead to deleterious implications for the animals’ conservation and welfare.

The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology have developed a learning concept for school classes in science centres named ‘learning trails’. In this concept, groups of students perform a series of thematically related experiments with installations in the science centre. The learning trails are designed to support the generic learning outcomes for science centre visits. We argue for using the previously developed Engagement Profile in an indicator to determine both media forms and generic learning outcomes for such learning concepts. Further, we implemented the learning trails in two modes: one mode used paper-based content to guide the students, while the other mode supported the use of tablet PCs where engaging content is triggered when the students approach the location of an experiment in the learning trail. We studied the engagement factors of the learning trails and observed how school classes use these. In a study with 113 students from lower secondary school, they answered short questionnaires that were integrated into the implementation of the learning trails. While the concept of the learning trails was evaluated positively, we could not find significant differences in how engaging the two implemented modes were.

In the digital era, enhancing the heritage resources of a tourist route means describing and networking them to promote their visibility and attractiveness. Prior studies mainly assess mountainous region’s natural resources through multi-indicator descriptive evaluation. This study aims to develop a comprehensive measurement of indicator’s value while assessing the tourism development potential of mountainous rural area. It concerns the main tourist route of the UNESCO M'Goun Geopark, located in the central High Atlas of Morocco. It also involves analyzing the criteria for choosing this destination by segmenting tourists' consumption experiences. Statistical analysis of the collected data reveals five dimensions of destination choice and four visitor groups. This article proposes to discuss findings and their applicability in terms of tourism destination management and decision-making, which can help local governments to rationally allocate tourism resources and land use.

Art organizations are increasingly focusing on enhancing the visitor experience to attract a wider audience. The aim objective of this study was to explore the key factors that influence the visitor experience of offline art exhibitions and to use a mixed methods to data collection and analysis. The research process was divided into three stages. In the first stage, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 respondents by dividing the exhibition experience into three time periods: pre, during, and post-visit. We extracted seven factors affecting visitor experience through qualitative content analysis including marketing, motivation, physical environment, exhibit quality, participation, technology and service facilities; in the second stage, we developed an assessment scale and pretested it; in the third stage, we collected 725 questionnaires to validate the factors of visitor experience in art exhibitions. The results of linear regression analyses showed that all seven key factors had a significant impact on visitor experience. This study constructed a scale to assess the factors of art exhibition experience, which provides theoretical sup-port for in-depth study of art exhibition experience and useful guidance for planning and design-ing art exhibitions to improve the quality of visitors' experience of art exhibitions.

Public green and open spaces fulfil various social, ecological, economic, and aesthetic roles, which complement each another, but can also compete with one another. COVID-19 pandemic catalysed multiple societal changes, including citizens’ perception, needs and expectations posed towards urban green spaces. This article discusses the extent to which the temporally and geographically changed patterns of experiencing these natural spaces also influenced users’ perception and behaviour as well as their appreciation of the conservation areas. The study is based upon two surveys carried out in the greater metropolitan region of Vienna, the capital city of Austria. A quantitative survey (representative online panel) among Viennese population (n=1012), as well as qualitive interviews with experts responsible for conservation areas, administrators of federal parks, along with NGOs representatives were carried out in spring and summer 2021. Our study shows the changed use of urban and suburban large green spaces and conservation areas: first, from the perspective of those responsible for the areas as well as the visitors. Both perspectives supplement one another. They highlight also changed perception of urban citizens towards green spaces during COVID-19 pandemic. An increased importance of time spent in nature (68%) and possibility to visit large green areas (67%) was reported by Viennese citizens. Also, higher recognition of green spaces located close to home was observed among 69% of the respondents. Thus, the presented study contributes to the ongoing international discussion on the transition of societal needs and its effects on urban green spaces induced by the pandemic. Presented results deliver solid arguments highlighting the need of urgent transformation towards a more sustainable, resilient and healthy urban space.

As governments in various countries and regions issue tourism-friendly policies in the post-pandemic period, the voices for tourism consumption recovery and innovative transformation have attracted great attention. Many scholars, experts and industry professionals in the field of festivals are actively exploring efficient solutions for festival marketing and sustainability. It is worth rethinking tourists’ consumption psychology and perceived image toward exiting festival products as well as the antecedents that affect festival loyalty. The Qingdao International Beer Festival, as one of the most influential festivals in China, was selected as the research case for this study. The main goal of this study was to investigate festival consumption promotion mechanism by proposing a conceptual framework in which the associations from destination familiarity and product familiarity to loyal intentions (re-patronage and recommendation) were examined, with mediators of overall festival image, perceived value and overall satisfaction. Furthermore, the moderating role of visitor involvement in the proposed framework was also adequately demonstrated. The research findings are expected to provide a significant reference for the recovery and competitiveness improvement of the entire festival industry.