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Abstract

Differences in responses to museums by frequent, occasional, and hardly ever visitors primarily reflect their psychographic characteristics, as measured by their valuing of six basic leisure concepts. Visitors' and nonvisitors' evaluations of two environmental factors in museums-comfort and caring-are related to their leisure values, leisure activity participation, and demographics. Examples of impediments to audience satisfaction, when museums do not emphasize comfort and caring, illustrate the difficulties both occasional and hardly ever visitors have in coping with the museum environment. Findings about the relationship between museum environmental factors and visitor and nonvisitor behavior and attitudes have developed from a series of in-museum and community studies.

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Comfort and Caring

Abstract

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