The interpretation capacity gap: heritage narrative techniques reach visitors unevenly
This study reveals a significant "interpretation capacity gap" in heritage sites, demonstrating that while interpretive designs are intended to create specific visitor experiences, the actual uptake of these experiences is consistently lower and unevenly distributed, proving that design provision alone does not guarantee visitor realization.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
When we visit a historic site, a museum, or a natural wonder, we expect to leave with a specific kind of experience. We hope to feel a connection to the past, to learn something new, or to be moved by the sheer scale of what we are seeing. For decades, the people who design these places have operated on a simple assumption: if they build the right signs, create the right exhibits, and tell the right stories, visitors will automatically have that experience. It is a logic of supply and demand where the provider believes that putting something on the shelf guarantees someone will take it. But this assumption has rarely been tested on a large scale. We have plenty of studies that look at how a single museum is designed, or how a single exhibit is received, but we have lacked a way to compare what is offered across many different places against what people actually say they felt. The question is not just whether interpretation works, but whether the specific experiences designers intend to create actually arrive in the minds of the people walking through the doors.
A researcher set out to answer this by looking at forty major heritage sites around the world, ranging from ancient monuments and archaeological digs to religious temples and modern landmarks. They did not rely on surveys or interviews, which can be influenced by how a question is asked. Instead, they looked at two distinct things. First, they analyzed the official materials, travel guides, and promotional texts for each site to see what experiences the designers were trying to create. They broke these down into eight different types of experiences, such as learning a fact, feeling entertained, or having a moment of deep personal insight. Second, they looked at over five hundred real reviews written by visitors on a major travel platform. They coded these reviews to see which of those same eight experiences the visitors actually mentioned. By comparing the two lists side by side, they could measure the gap between what was promised and what was delivered.
The results revealed a significant and uneven gap. In every single category the researchers looked at, visitors reported the experience less often than the designers had intended. However, the size of this gap varied wildly depending on the type of experience. When the goal was simply to convey factual information, like the date a building was constructed or the function of a room, the gap was small. About forty-two percent of the sites were designed to provide this knowledge, and roughly thirty-eight percent of visitors mentioned it. This is the closest match between design and reality. But as the intended experiences became more abstract or emotional, the gap widened dramatically. For example, every single one of the forty sites was designed to make visitors feel a sense of separation from their ordinary daily lives, to feel as though they had stepped into another world. Yet, only six percent of the visitors actually wrote about feeling that way. Similarly, while many sites tried to create moments of deep personal insight or reflection, these were reported by fewer than ten percent of visitors.
The study suggests that the problem is not necessarily that the sites are failing to try, but that the nature of the experience matters. Experiences that involve concrete information are easier to transmit because facts can be written down and read. But experiences that rely on a visitor's internal state, such as feeling a sense of awe or a feeling of being "separated" from the mundane, are much harder to guarantee. A designer can build an immersive room or script a ritual, but they cannot force a visitor to feel the intended emotion. The researcher found that the more a site relied on these difficult-to-deliver conditions, the larger the gap became. In fact, the presence of a design feature was a very weak predictor of whether a visitor would report having that experience. Even when a site did not have a specific feature at all, visitors still sometimes reported having the experience, and conversely, when a site was fully equipped with a feature, most visitors still did not report it.
This finding challenges a long-held belief in the heritage industry that simply installing an interactive exhibit or a commemorative display is enough to ensure the experience happens. The researcher argues that we need to stop treating the presence of a design element as proof of success. Instead, they propose a new way of evaluating heritage sites: audit the arrival, not just the provision. This means looking at what visitors actually say they experienced, rather than assuming that because a sign was put up, the message was received. The study does not claim that these sites are failing entirely, but rather that the connection between what is offered and what is felt is far more fragile than we thought. The gap is real, it is measurable, and it is not uniform; it is smallest where the experience is about facts and largest where the experience is about feelings. For the people who manage these places, the lesson is clear: designing a condition for an experience is not the same thing as creating the experience itself.
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