Intervening to Prevent Unwanted Touching of Museum Displays: Incorporating an Observing Response with Three Prompting Conditions

ABSTRACT

Museums struggle with visitors touching artworks, sometimes causing extensive damage. No known empirical study counted the frequency of visitors touching art displays, nor tested strategies for preventing this. This field study employed an alternating treatments design to evaluate the behavioral impact of three sign conditions designed to alleviate this problem: 1) a Directive sign that specified the behavior to avoid, 2) a Rationale sign that informed visitors why they should not touch displays, and 3) a Rationale-plus-Graphic sign that added a supporting visual. The signs were double-sided and included an observing response component that directed visitors to move to the back of the sign to observe the message located there, which aimed to increase the probability of visitors reading and complying with the prompt. Systematic behavioral observations indicated that the signs were equivalently effective in decreasing display touching. None of the visitors who emitted the observing response touched the exhibit.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum
• observing response
• sign
• touching
• visitor

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.