Enlightened hedonism: Exploring the relationship of service value, visitor knowledge and interest, to visitor enjoyment at heritage attractions

• The heritage of a property does not have to be compromised to attract visitors.
• Visitor knowledge does not have a major influence on enjoyment or visit behaviour.
• ‘Anthropogenic’ and ‘hedonic’ service values help to predict visitor behaviour.
• Visitor satisfaction derives from co-creation at the heritage property.

Service provision at heritage attractions is evolving at a rapid pace, transforming management directed initiatives into more creative, visitor inspired relationships. These connect the historic and natural environmental fabric of the properties visited, directly to the enhancement of the visitor's hedonistic aims and behavioural dispositions. Heritage attractions have traditionally been polarised between those, whose main aim is to entertain and others, where conservation and issues of authenticity are pre-eminent. The findings described in this paper should encourage managers of heritage attractions to recognise that entertainment and conservation priorities are not exclusive alternatives but are complementary and can be reconciled with the active involvement of the visitor, creating their own servicefacilitated experience.This paper reports the findings from a survey of over 184 heritage attractions in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and a sample population of 109,000 respondents. The critical dimensions of heritage knowledge and interest and the evaluations of service and behaviour are measured. The study developed and tested a structural equation model which was validated and reliably predicted levels of enjoyment and behaviour from two latent constructs, anthropogenic service value and hedonic service value.