Robert D. Bixler

Verified

Robert verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Robert verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Clemson University

Most interpretive experiences occur in the leisure sector suggesting interpreters must provoke future engagement rather than compel future engagement. Consequently, the potency of the ending of interpretive presentations seems critical to motivating future and ongoing engagement among heritage site visitors. The quality of the conclusion of an inte...

Environmental education is an essential part of understanding nature and protecting the environment, yet it is not sufficient. Take two demographically near-identical young adults, one interested in nature and the environment, the other person, not so much. Both would probably have had access to several if not many formal environmental education ex...

This paper explains how encouraging students to participate in a limited range of outdoor recreation activities enhances the effectiveness of environmental education and career paths.

Community centers are fundamental features of many communities as a space for social interaction and the development of social relationships, which can contribute to social capital, a sense of belonging, and a sense of community. An understanding of how relationships develop in community centers may help managers encourage relationship building and...

Strategic efforts expended towards identifying and evaluating ideas for a graduate student's thesis or dissertation can help prepare that student for a successful career as either a researcher or practitioner. Generating intriguing and novel ideas can help advance the field of leisure studies, yet the process of identifying great research ideas and...

This conceptual paper explores how the system of experiences that children encounter in a traditional, residential summer camp setting parallel traditional, residential, college setting for first-year students. Camp is a complex system in the sphere of youth development programs (YDP) because of the expectation for rapid adjustment by the camper to...

Because the ostensible majority of incidental human–insect (and other arthropods) interactions are negative, any interest in non-pretty “bugs” appears to be inherently demotivated. Three complementary studies explored US college students’ perceptions, knowledge, and experiences of insects to better understand folk classifications and to identify po...

This position paper makes explicit what can be gained by increasing interpretive naturalists' focus on interpreting insects and their close relatives, particularly in local and regional settings. Insects are widely loathed because a few species are highly irritating. Helping people become aware and observant of the overwhelming percentage of insect...

This study demonstrates that faces of spiders that are neotenic are perceived as less scary than others, if not cute. A convenience sample of adults (n=69) at a university distributed 15 photographs spider faces along a ruler based on perceived scariness. Six of the seven photographs of jumping spiders (Family Salticidae) were ranked as least scary...

Outlines a variety of differences between demographically similar people, one group who participates in nature-dependent activities, and those who do not participate.

Interpreters can address issues related to conservation or preservation of heritage resources, yet some visitors, who are often on vacation or on a weekend trip to recover from a stressful workweek or year, may not want to be confronted with these issues. This research note reports the results of a single question asked of campers (n=40) in develop...

A 2008 study of the interests, motivations, constraints, spending and travel behavior or members of mushroom clubs in the United States.

Visitors considering attending an interpretive program open to the public at a zoo, historic site, park, or museum may have no more information available to them than the title of the program and its location and date. This research investigated how the structure of a program title helped or hindered people from inferring the topic of the program,...

Zoos embrace docents/volunteers as a means of interpreting the threats to wildlife and biodiversity to visitors. To accomplish this, zoos provide docents’ education, training, and work experience. Docents themselves also engage in solitary and social wildlife experiences outside of their volunteer obligations. This study examined what motivates doc...

Abstract This study documented the varying importance and availability of content and communication skills and certifications for entry-level interpretive naturalists, based on the perceptions of experienced interpreters. A web-based survey was sent to (n=867) interpreters. Responses were received from 308 interpreters. The five most important cont...

An understanding of how identifiable groups perceive fuel reduction will help forest managers develop formal and informal communication strategies responsive to each group's concerns. This study identified three opinion segments on the basis of their attitudinal and behavioral characteristics about fuel reduction in the southern Appalachians and fu...

Interpretive programs are offered by parks and public lands to inspire the visitors to further appreciate the heritage resources presented and protected within parks. The strategic use of interpretation requires participants, and the broader the audience, the wider the influence. Using an outcome-oriented approach, 40 semi-structured interviews wer...

Natural history has all but disappeared from formal education in the United States. This places the responsibility of introducing people to natural history within nonformal educational settings, with interpretive naturalists taking a leading role. This qualitative study of the life histories of 51 natural history-oriented professionals establishes...

This article provides dozen concrete interactions that interpretive naturalists, school teachers, environmental educators, parents and peers can engage in with children, youth and young adults to provide opportunities for continued exploration of activities and skills around nature, natural history and the environment.

Much research on environmental socialization and significant life experiences indicates the primacy of childhood play in wild environments in shaping later adult interest in wild places. Less is known about what happens after childhood. This study investigated the remembered childhood, teen and early adult years of young adults (age 19 to 35) invol...

The authors conducted an ethnography investigating children's lived experiences in a 3-day residential environmental education (EE) program with 20 gifted 4th- and 5th-grade students. The authors also conducted participant observation and a series of interviews before, during, and after the trip. After the authors conducted the interviews and colle...

South Florida summer residents (n=1806) from five counties (Broward, Collier, Lee, Miami-Dade, and Monroe Counties) were asked to recall the names of two units of the National Park Service and, when prompted, to recognize each of the four national park units located in south Florida. Only 8.4% of respondents could name two units of the National Par...

Both wildland recreationists and conservationists report that wildland childhood play is an important socialization experience. However, researchers know little about the details of play experiences during the formative childhood years. In this article, the authors describe the content and physical and social components of childhood play as recalle...

The willingness of individuals to enroll in swimming classes requires them to recognize they do not have functional skills. This study investigated the self-efficacy of young adults 18 to 35 years of age regarding their understanding of what constitutes a competent swimmer. Forty-five interviews were conducted in recreation centers and parks with s...

Crime and urban encroachment to United States National Parks and other natural resource areas has been a growing problem for land managers. This study examined how the perceptions of law enforcement rangers have developed in respect to the level of enforcement toward law‐breaking visitors over a 25‐year period, and it identified the role of a park...

Members of two Trout Unlimited Chapters associated with the Chattooga National Wild and Scenic River (South Carolina, Georgia) completed mail surveys (n = 292, 71% response rate) of experience use history with local substitute streams, number of substitute streams for the Chattooga, and importance ratings for stream and fishing attributes. About 65...

Place bonding is a common phenomenon in many recreation areas, where people develop an affective and cognitive based attachment to special resource settings. Conceptually, place bonding is fairly well understood; empirically it is less so. In this study, a five dimensional orientation to place bonding of trout anglers for a wild and scenic stream w...

The book chapter reviews existing research that non-educational experiences occurring outside of school, particularly some types of outdoor recreation, are critical to increasing the salience of non-human welfare environmental issues.

Experience use history (EUH) was hypothesized to be linked to recreational place bonding and resource substitution behavior. Trout anglers (n = 203) of two Trout Unlimited chapters were surveyed (response rate = 71%) for EUH, place bonding, and resource substitution. Four classifications (Beginners, Visitors, Locals, and Veterans) of EUH were forme...

A written 7-item self-report scale on sensitivity to disgust and participation in watercraft activities was administered to 450 seasonal park employees. Correlations indicate that nonparticipation in seven different watercraft sports was weakly related with reactions of disgust to contact with natural bodies of water (r(pbis) = -.12 to -.32, p < .0...

This study investigated the role of informal and formal learning in pre-service training and on the job among new and returning summer camp staff. Self-perceptions of skills were measured at three different points during summer camp employment. To measure self- perceptions, a series of 24 knowledge/skill areas were identified by experts as importan...

Experience use history (EUH) was hypothesized to be linked to emotional place bonding. Avid trout anglers (n=203) of two Trout Unlimited chapters were surveyed (response rate = 71%) for EUH and place bonding. Four classifications (Beginners, Visitors, Locals, and Veterans) of EUH were formed and a 26-item scale was rated to form five dimensions of...

Two studies with adolescent youth (N = 1,376, N = 450) help clarify the relationship between childhood play experiences in wild environments and later environmental preferences in the life domains of work, leisure, and school. Respondents reporting having played in wild environments had more positive perceptions of natural environments, outdoor rec...

New and returning camp staff were surveyed about the difficulty of camp-specific skills and knowledge and their own abilities. A summer-camp training inventory of 24 camp-specific skills and knowledge statements was administered to a total of 702 new and returning staff at eight camps on the first and last day of pre-season training sessions and af...

Detailed descriptions of barriers to environmental education (EE) can provide opportunities for educators to foresee potential problems in programs. High disgust sensitivity is an intrapersonal barrier that constrains preference for learning opportunities involving manipulation of some organic materials. Middle school students in Texas (N = 450) co...

To determine whether trails on visitor maps should indicate distance only or include "time to complete," Cleveland Metroparks interviewed 287 adult visitors to a large regional zoo. The mean perceived "average time to walk a mile" was 17 minutes, but responses ranged from 1.5 to 60 minutes. Half of respondents underestimated the time needed. (SV)

The relationships between fear expectancy, disgust sensitivity, desire for modem comforts, and preference for wildland and built environments and related activiffes were examined. Using a population of predominantly suburban and rural eighth-grade students (n =450), all three variables were found to be significantly related to preferences for wildl...

The relationships between fear expectancy, disgust sensitivity, desire for modern comforts, and preference for wildland and built environments and related activities were examined. Using a population of predominantly suburban and rural eighth-grade students (n=450), all three variables were found to be significantly related to preferences for wildl...

On-site user perceptions of resource and use impacts were investigated at three national parks in the southeastern United States. The major purpose of the research was to investigate the symbolic meaning that different groups of park visitors assign to specific impact situations, involving the perception of five categories of impacts: litter, erosi...

Interpreters who understand differing reasoning abilities of children can more effectively use humor with children, as in the case of getting a school group comfortable with a stranger (the interpreter) in a strange environment (the woods). Humor can also enhance learning and information retention and increase attention span. Development of humor i...

The Wildland Fear Expectancy Scale was developed to measure apprehension about visiting forested areas. The scale was administered to 1,337 middle-school and high-school students in the southeastern United States. Use of an expectancy approach and reference to a specific situation (day trip to a forest) produced results that diverged from studies t...

Discusses the development of wayfinding skills of individuals visiting wild land parks and the use of maps. Presents suggestions for improving these skills. Contains 26 references. (JRH)

Interpreters at urban nature centers were asked to recall and list fears expressed by students on field trips to wildland areas. Forty-eight interpreters recalled 564 examples of fearful reactions. Responses were interpreted based on the literature on fear. Fears of snakes, insects, nonindigenous animals, and plants were most frequently cited. Enli...