Implementation of Individual-level Emotional Display Rules among nature-based Guides

This scholarly endeavour seeks a broader understanding of how emotional display rules are formed and enacted in loosely organised sectors of tourism that lack organisational culture and formal training. To achieve this, the researchers employed a mixed-method approach combining qualitative methods and participant observations. Data was gathered through 18 semi-structured interviews and 5 field observations of nature-based guides across various parts of Australia. A total of 130 code pairs, representing linked emotional display rules, emerged from the transcripts and were analysed using domain and semantic analysis. In the less clear areas of data reconstruction, field observation data and its theoretical implications assisted the researcher in developing constructs between the emerging themes. The resulting theory suggests that guides develop their own emotional display rules to simultaneously meet different goals within the service interactions, such as conservation education, risk management, and creating fun. Driven by instincts to build a sense of community, balance diverse visitor motives, and employ multiple strategies for deep acting, guides may harmoniously blend emotional display rules that are highly unique and tailored to each context. Therefore, guides' individual sense of shared responsibility towards the environment, their business motives, and visitor interests become a source of their display norms. Moreover, achieving these goals allows them to attain leadership and mediatory roles of their job description, where emotional labour takes place.

The emotion-laden content and nonverbal cues of interviews and field observations are the disguised emotional display rules used by guides. These exemplar quotes serve as code pairs in the attached analysis of interactions between emotional display rules workbook, where each code's direction of implementation is identified, and the reasons for their occurrences are attached as supportive memos. The most recurrent logic patterns are used by researchers from an insider's perspective as premises to build a conceptual model encompassing the formation of these display norms among guides and their utilisation in the emotional labour process during visitor interactions. Simultaneously, investigators refer to the Field Observation Logs that have recorded highly relevant excerpts across 5 different tours. Delving into the similar situations sensed during those five field observations enables them to clarify obscure parts of the interviews' data reconstruction from an outsider's perspective. This reflexivity of roles between etic and emic perspectives facilitates data crystallisation and consolidates the findings. These data sets were obtained over scattered timeframes to reduce biases towards recent incidents of environmental and health-related crises and their impacts on the economy and society.