Evaluating Participant Experience Journeys: Peak-End Moments, Global Summaries, Dispersion, and Pattern
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18666/JPRA-2022-11484Abstract
Substantial gains have been made in recent years toward understanding techniques for immersing participants in recreation activities. Immersed participants “become physically (or virtually) a part of the experience itself ” (Pine & Gilmore, 2020, p. 40); their actions merge with their awareness (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). As competition in the leisure and travel industries intensifies, managers and program evaluators will need efficient approaches to measure the ebbs and flows of participants’ immersion during participation. The latest research suggests it is not sufficient to use a single number to represent the entire flow of immersion during an activity. Rather, measures of salient features of participants’ “experience journeys” may be needed. Experience journey measurement requires measuring participants’ immersion repeatedly, at successive intervals as an activity unfolds. We developed an efficient way of measuring immersion experience journeys and examined relations between select experience journey characteristics (central tendency, dispersion, and pattern) and two outcomes ordinarily valued by park and recreation managers: enjoyment and proclivity to recommend the activity to other people. We collected experience observations (n=1,189) from 150 youth in a summer camp, who completed questionnaires immediately following each of eight structured activity sessions: swimming, climbing, archery, riflery, dancing, kayaking, fishing, and crafts. Participants shared their immersion experience journeys immediately after the activity by drawing a line through a time-series graph representing their levels of immersion as the activity progressed. Immersion at each time point in the experience journey was measured as the vertical distance from the baseline to the drawn line, at each of 12 sequential observations. The questionnaire also included conventional post-hoc measures of enjoyment and proclivity to recommend the activity. Dispersion and pattern of immersion experience journeys were found to be important predictors of enjoyment and proclivity to recommend. Two measures of central tendency (peak-end average and global average) were also strong predictors. Models using global summaries as the measure of central tendency of immersion explained greater variance than peak-end averages until pattern and dispersion were added to the models. Results point to the potential utility of new and efficient questionnaires for monitoring experience journeysand continuously improving recreation programs and events.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Sagamore Publishing LLC (hereinafter the “Copyright Owner”)
Journal Publishing Copyright Agreement for Authors
PLEASE REVIEW OUR POLICIES AND THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT, AND INDICATE YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS BY CHECKING THE ‘AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS COPYRIGHT NOTICE’ CHECKBOX BELOW.
I understand that by submitting an article to Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, I am granting the copyright to the article submitted for consideration for publication in Journal of Park and Recreation Administration to the Copyright Owner. If after consideration of the Editor of the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, the article is not accepted for publication, all copyright covered under this agreement will be automatically returned to the Author(s).
THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT
Assignment of Copyright
I hereby assign to the Copyright Owner the copyright in the manuscript I am submitting in this online procedure and any tables, illustrations or other material submitted for publication as part of the manuscript in all forms and media (whether now known or later developed), throughout the world, in all languages, for the full term of copyright, effective when the article is accepted for publication.
Reversion of Rights
Articles may sometimes be accepted for publication but later be rejected in the publication process, even in some cases after public posting in “Articles in Press” form, in which case all rights will revert to the Author.
Retention of Rights for Scholarly Purposes
I understand that I retain or am hereby granted the Retained Rights. The Retained Rights include the right to use the Preprint, Accepted Manuscript, and the Published Journal Article for Personal Use and Internal Institutional Use.
All journal material is under a 12 month embargo. Authors who would like to have their articles available as open access should contact Sagamore-Venture for further information.
In the case of the Accepted Manuscript and the Published Journal Article, the Retained Rights exclude Commercial Use, other than use by the author in a subsequent compilation of the author’s works or to extend the Article to book length form or re-use by the author of portions or excerpts in other works.
Published Journal Article: the author may share a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI.
Author Representations
- The Article I have submitted to the journal for review is original, has been written by the stated author(s) and has not been published elsewhere.
- The Article was not submitted for review to another journal while under review by this journal and will not be submitted to any other journal.
- The Article contains no libelous or other unlawful statements and does not contain any materials that violate any personal or proprietary rights of any other person or entity.
- I have obtained written permission from copyright owners for any excerpts from copyrighted works that are included and have credited the sources in the Article.
- If the Article was prepared jointly with other authors, I have informed the co-author(s) of the terms of this Journal Publishing Agreement and that I am signing on their behalf as their agent, and I am authorized to do so.