An Overarching Investigation into Individual-level Emotional Display Rules in Nature-based Guiding

This research endeavour aims to deliver a panoptic understanding of the categorisation of emotional display rules applied in tourism. Towards this objective, the investigators applied a mixed research method incorporating qualitative methodology and participant observations. Data was collected in the form of 18 semi-structured interviews and 5 field observations on nature-based guides in different parts of Australia. 376 codes representing emotional display rules were extracted from the transcripts and were analysed through domain analysis and semantic analysis. In the obscure phases of its reconstruction, field observation data and its theoretical implications played a key role and helped the researcher in building constructs between the emergent themes and resultant theory. The findings of this data analysis suggest that the boundaries between sources of display rules i.e. societal, occupational and organisational norms are vague. Also, there are no clear demarcations between implicitness and explicitness of display rules propagated within guiding sector. These result in guides exercising considerable amount of freedom in deriving their emotional display rules. However, in subsequent application to the service context, guides experience mutual exclusivity in their implementation role i.e. regarding them as either positive or negative display norms and executing them as integrating, differentiating or masking displays of emotions. Therefore, the subsequent fit and utilisation of emotional display rules in the frontline interaction becomes largely streamlined.

The emotion-laden content of interviews are disguised emotional display rules used by guides in their frontline interactions. These exemplar quotes serve as codes in the attached data typology analysis, which are classified simultaneously on the basis of several classification criteria for emotional display rules. Obscurity and challenges might be observed in classifying them on the basis of their sources and propagation medium, showing overlaps between them repeatedly across the 376 parts of data reconstruction. However, the process of assigning them a type on the basis of their direction of implementation and fit to the purpose in context would be considerably easier as their subcategories are mutually exclusive. These repetitive patterns help the investigators in cumulatively gathering a grasp of the relationships between different types of display rules and different criteria themselves across a variety of guiding contexts. Their visualisation would facilitate them in building a broad classification structure of emotional display rules incorporating all the criteria and simultaneously informing the nuances of deriving them from a variety of sources and applying them in specific social interactions. These data sets were obtained over different timeframes to minimize biases towards recent incidents of environmental and health-related crisis and their impacts on the society and economy.