DISPLAY OF EMOTIONAL LABOUR BY SAFARI GUIDES
At Werribee Open Range Zoo (WORZ), the safari bus tour guides are enthusiastic and passionate about conservation, and regularly display this emotion to zoo visitors. However, even the best guides have days where guiding is hard work. This hard work is called emotional labour and can be performed by faking emotions (surface acting) or by managing felt emotion to be ‘authentic’ (deep acting).
Despite an assumed positive relationship between deep acting and a range of organisationally-desired visitor outcomes, no previous research has examined the relationship between the types of acting and those outcomes.
Dr Pieter Van Dijk and Dr Liam Smith from the Monash University Tourism Research Unit investigated whether zoo visitors perceive the emotional labour of safari guides and how it affects their experience.
AIMS
METHODS
Data for this project was collected at WORZ in 2008 and 2009. After each bus tour, guides were asked to complete a brief survey about their emotional labour during the tour. Visitors were intercepted as they alighted from each tour and asked the same questions about the emotional labour of their guide as well as their perception of how the bus tour affected a number of outcomes (such as attitude to nature conservation, made them think, their overall experience at the zoo, the likelihood they would recommend the experience to others).
The second study involved examining a number of possible variables that could predict the type of emotional labour guides perform. These included the guide’s personality, workload, tenure, frequency, personal commitment to the zoo and its mission, awareness of and commitment to emotional display rules.
RESULTS
Drawing upon a sample of 688 visitors and 66 guided tours, the results of hierarchical linear modelling found no statistically significant relationship between guide-reported acting and visitor perceptions of acting. In other words, visitors were unable to tell what sort of emotional labour guides were performing. Visitor perceptions of deep and surface acting were related to visitor outcomes in the expected direction. That is, if visitors perceived guides to be genuine, which they did nearly all the time, then they also stated that they had a good time, had a better attitude to nature conservation and would recommend the experience to others.
Data from the second study is still being analysed.
PROJECT OUTCOMES
The main conclusion to be drawn from the first study is that guides do a good job of displaying genuine emotion regardless of their actual feelings, and that the guides' display of emotion is important to visitors.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
- on this research project, see:
Van Dijk, P., Smith, L.D.G. and Cooper, B. (in press) ‘Are you for real? An evaluation of the relationship between emotional labour and visitor outcomes.' Tourism Management. Accepted 5th Nov, 2009.
- on the Monash University Tourism Research Unit - click here.
- on Werribee Open Range Zoo - click here.
