Issues regarding museum evaluation and the visitor experience: a case study of "Signs of a nation" in The museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Abstract

From their genesis in Roman times museums are now a common fixture in the social landscape of current society. The literature review describes how the role and purpose of museums has reflected the changing global social, economic, and political context. Specifically, there has been a change in government spending that has affected museum funding and forced museums to act more competitively while justifying their place in society. Changing customer expectations with increased disposable incomes and a demand for more leisure has increased visitor diversity having a profound impact on museum operation and presentation. This increased interest and competition from other leisure institutions impacting on museums has seen museums evolve into tourist attractions offering education and entertainment. These global pressures have meant that museums need to evaluate themselves to better understand and retain a strong visitor museum relationship. Understanding this relationship requires consistent evaluation, which in turn has exposed various issues debated in the literature concerning effective evaluation. In the research context of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa a case study approach of the 'Signs of a Nation' exhibition was adopted. This permanent exhibition represents the 'Treaty of Waitangi'. This exhibition is considered an appropriate exhibition to explore issues in the literature because it is subject to visitor diversity. Also because the exhibition content is both historical and contemporary it provides a broader context to apply observations and questions concerning the issues. The issues explored concern visitor diversity, the spatial use of exhibitions, language, expectations and perceptions, attitudes, satisfaction and learning. It is argued that such diversity and complexity demands a multi-method approach that was adopted in this thesis. To explore these issues the thesis used secondary and primary data and adopted observation and interview techniques. The quantitative and qualitative findings in this thesis illustrate the value of the multi-method approach because various methods help explore particular issues and the data findings can be triangulated to demonstrate and support other findings. The results of the case study achieved a deeper insight into the visitor museum relationship and confirmed the relevance of the issues in the literature. It is argued that evaluation must acknowledge visitor diversity for effective evaluation as it is this context that affects the issues of museum evaluation. The research demonstrates the value of tracking as an observation technique giving greater insight into visitor behaviour and its relevance for better serving the museum visitor relationship and subsequently allowing for more effective evaluation. From the issues explored the research argues that there is a gap in the literature concerning spatial behaviour and argues for more consistent exploration of the visitor agenda in terms of expectations, perceptions, attitudes, satisfaction and learning. While the issue of language for both visitor and museum is examined and provides useful insight into visitor and museum perceptions. This thesis has exposed the complexity of museum evaluations, visitor diversity and museum visitor relationship. However, this thesis is not an exhaustive study but it does provide valuable starting points for deeper investigation in the areas investigated to better understand the visitor museum relationship.