This dissertation examines the effect of podcast tours on park visitor experiences.
Podcast tours have emerged as a new medium in facilitating the interaction between
tourists and destinations. Providing visitors with enhanced experiences through the use of
interpretive technologies is especially important for national parks dealing with
enhancing visitors' experiences which may influence visitors' perception of
environmental stewardship and, in turn, positively affect preserving environmental
resources. Furthermore, there has been a noticeable increase in consumer demand for
podcast tours. Based on theoretical accounts that human voices convey rich social
information, this dissertation proposes that podcast tours enhance perceived social
presence and mindfulness which leads to enhanced tourist experiences (learning,
enjoyment, and escape) and environmental stewardship (attitudinal and behavioral
stewardship).
A field experiment was conducted at Padre Island National Seashore using MP3
players containing podcast tours. The podcasts were manipulated using four
experimental conditions: 2 information source compositions (single narrator voice vs. multiple narrator voices) x 2 narrating styles (formal style vs. conversational style). The
questionnaire administered to subjects after they took the podcast tour included measures
of social presence, mindfulness, tourist experience (learning, enjoyment, and escape),
and stewardship (attitudinal and behavioral stewardship). The pre-questionnaire included
question items regarding the nature of the visit, visitor characteristics, technology usage
behavior, audio tour evaluation and socio-demographics. Responses from 221 visitors
were analyzed using structural equation modeling with LISREL 8.7.
The results provide evidence that multiple voices, and to some extent also
narration style, positively increase social presence but neither experimental condition had
any influence on mindfulness. The increased feeling of social presence influences park
visitors' enjoyment and escape experiences but not learning. Mindfulness was found to
affect visitors' learning, enjoyment, and escape experience. The results further show that
enhanced experiences positively influence attitudinal stewardship which in turn leads to
behavioral stewardship toward national parks.
The results of this dissertation generally support the theoretical model suggesting
that even if communicated through audio-only media, the human voice creates and
sustains a positive social context for meaningful interaction which influences tourist
experiences and stewardship. Mindfulness was also found to be an important construct
impacting the quality of visitor experiences but could not be explained by the specific
podcast tour designs tested. From a practical perspective, the findings provide important
insights regarding the usefulness of podcast tours as interpretative media, and also
suggest that specific designs are more capable of fostering feelings of social presence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-12-7499 |
| Date | 2009 December 1900 |
| Creators | Kang, Myung Hwa |
| Contributors | Gretzel, Ulrike |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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