Visitor demand for interpretation and its effectiveness at Fushan Botanical Garden

The purpose of this study was to determine the reasons and preference types of visitors’ interpretative demand at Fushan Botanical Garden (FBG), Ilan County, Taiwan, and also to analyze differences in environmental attitudes, environmental behaviors, overall satisfaction levels and intentions to revisit between guests who did and did not use the interpretative services. Using an on-site interview with a systematic sampling method, 484 visitors were surveyed. The results showed that 98.3% of visitors desired interpretative services mainly due to their intention to enhance their knowledge about the natural environment. Most visitors commonly selected the 2 main interpretative media which were interpretative signs and volunteer interpreters. The results also indicated that when using volunteer interpretation, there were positive effects on guests’ environmental behaviors, overall satisfaction levels and intentions to revisit, but the visitors’ environmental attitudes did not appear to have changed.