Exploring the emotional dimensions of geology interpretations

Interpretation theory states that interpreters should provide visitors with both intellectual and emotional opportunities to connect with natural and cultural resources. Scientific interpretive content lends itself to intellectual connections, but emotional connections prove more challenging. Through the use of data derived from 139 pre- and post-program questionnaires, focus group interviews with 195 visitors, and 37 geology-themed interpretive programs collected at 12 National Parks and Monuments throughout the western United States and Hawaii, this study used a concurrent mixed methods approach to generate grounded theory on the subject of emotionally effective geoscience interpretation. Six strategies for connecting visitors emotionally to geologic resources emerged from the data coding and analysis process, including: 1) Pure connections to provocative geoscience concepts such as time, dynamic processes, and rare phenomena. 2) Aesthetic connections cultivating a link between admiration of beauty and geologic processes. 3) Human-facilitated connections using intense immersion, geologic dangers and benefits, and personal narratives. 4) Biophilia-facilitated connections between living things and their geologic foundation. 5) Place-facilitated connections leveraging meaningful locales. 6) Tangible-facilitated connections acknowledging the importance of kinesthetic experience.;These strategies allow interpreters to frame geology-themed interpretive content in terms of personal relevance to the visitors. The six strategies, combined with empirical and theoretical frameworks from other fields of study, were used to construct a Geology Emotions Model (GEM) that describes the geoscience interpretive experience. The GEM is structured like the Interpretive Equation, (KR + KA) * AT = IO. Knowledge of the resource (KR) includes geologic concepts and materials, knowledge of the audience (KA) includes internal and external factors that influence visitor response to the program, appropriate techniques (AT) are the six strategies for effective geology interpretation, and interpretive opportunities (JO) are emotional connections to geologic resources. The results of this study also suggest visitors do not experience intellectual and emotional connections as distinct constructs, and sensory connections may represent a third pathway to interpretive meaning-making. Future research could quantitatively measure the effectiveness of the six strategies discovered in this study, and qualitatively explore the components of the GEM to a greater degree, to better understand the dynamics of the geoscience interpretive process.