Experiment 2 47

Experiment 2 was designed to provide additional evidence for the effect of experience structure, employing a between-subjects design with self-reported experience evaluations. Specifically, participants evaluated either an alternately or a sequentially structured hybrid experience. I expected that experience evaluations would be higher when the hybrid experience was structured alternately.

4.2.1

Design and Procedure

One hundred and ten undergraduate students (66% female) participated in this experiment for partial course credit. Upon arrival, participants read an online

experimental instruction that asked them to acquire from the lab assistant an itinerary for an event titled “Bonjour French Festival.” The randomly assigned itinerary was

structured either alternately or sequentially. Participants then read through the itinerary at their own pace and responded to a series of evaluation questions regarding the event.

The hybrid experience Bonjour French Festival was a two-day event composed of film watching activities and acrobatic performances. The film watching experience consisted of three different genres of films: (1) Paris, Je t’aime, a film about love, (2)

Once Upon a Forest, a film about the natural environment, and (3) Léolo, a film about

life. The acrobatic performances consisted of three different shows: (1) Amaluno, a show about a family’s island exploration trip, (2) KOOZA, a show about a life changing

performances were structured either sequentially or alternately. In the sequential structure, participants finished watching all the films on the first day and then attended the three acrobatic performances on the second day (see Appendix C for the sequential festival itinerary). For the alternating itinerary, the films and acrobatic performances were scheduled such that a film was followed by an acrobatic show, which was then followed by another film (see Appendix D for the alternating festival itinerary). In both itineraries, a two-and-half hour break was scheduled between each watching activity. By doing so, I hoped to ensure that the activity arrangement was not perceived as being overwhelming for participants.

Both itineraries were printed on a French-themed background, and participants were told that the event would be presented by FCCA (French Canadian Community Association) on November 7 and 8, 2015 at the Bell Lightbox Theatre on King Street West in Toronto. This additional information was used to increase the believability of the experimental scenario.

4.2.2

Measurements

Dependent Variables: The key dependent variable was experience evaluation. Participants were asked, “Please imagine that you have decided to attend this festival, please evaluate this event on the following items.” In response to this question, participants rated five items on a seven-point scale, anchored using the labels

“undesirable/desirable,” “not enjoyable/enjoyable,” “not interesting/interesting,” “not attractive/attractive,” “not exciting/exciting” (adapted from Mitchell, Thompson, Peterson, & Cronk, 1997; Raghunathan & Corfman, 2006). An exploratory factor

analysis showed that these five items were related to a single underlying dimension (82% of the variance explained). Therefore, I averaged the item scores to create an overall measure of experience evaluation (α = .95).

In addition to experience evaluation items, participants also indicated on two seven-point scales (anchored with “not at all/very much”) to what extent they expected to feel mentally exhausted and physically fatigued if they attended the French festival. Additionally, participants indicated how familiar (anchored with “not at all familiar/very familiar”) and unique (anchored using the labels “not at all unique/very unique”) the festival seemed to be. I examined these factors to make sure changes in experience structure did not lead to changes in other responses that could potentially affect experience evaluations.

4.2.3

Results

Control Variables: I conducted a one-way MANOVA with experience structure as the independent variable, and physical fatigue, mental exhaustion, experience familiarity, and experience uniqueness as dependent variables. None of these variables was

significantly affected by experience structure (see Table 1; F’s < .71, p’s > .10).

Experience Structure: I conducted a one-way ANOVA with experience structure as the between-subjects independent variable and experience evaluation as the dependent variable. Experience structure significantly affected experience evaluation (F(1, 109) = 6.92; p = .01; η2 = .06); thus supporting Hypothesis 1. The alternately structured French

festival was evaluated more favourably than the sequentially structured festival (Malternating

Table 1: Experiment 2 summary statistics. Alternating (n = 53) Sequential (n = 56) DV M SD M SD Experience Evaluation 5.35 1.02 4.73 1.41 Other Variables Physical Fatigue 2.57 1.65 2.71 1.42 Mental Exhaustion 2.91 1.75 3.16 1.68 Experience Familiarity 3.40 1.86 3.18 1.75 Experience Uniqueness 4.47 1.61 4.52 1.72

Figure 6: The effect of experience structure on evaluation in Experiment 2.

4.2.4

Experiment 2 Discussion

The results of Experiment 2 support Hypothesis 1. As expected, the alternately structured French festival was evaluated more favourably than the sequentially structured one. Experience structure did not affect perceptions of familiarity and uniqueness or the extent to which individuals expected to feel physical fatigue or mental exhaustion from attending the festival.

So far, I established the basic relationship between experience structure and experience evaluation through varied experimental designs (between-subjects and within- subjects), multiple measures of experience evaluation (event choice, camp design, and self-reported experience evaluations), and with different types of hybrid experiences

4.2 4.4 4.6 4.8 5 5.2 5.4 5.6 Sequential Alternating Exp er ie n ce Eval u ati on

(fitness–leisure event, summer camp, and the French festival). In Chapter 5, I employ three experiments to examine the underlying mechanism as to why an alternating experience structure is more favourably evaluated.