Andrew Balmford has published work on how little educational info zoo visitors retain following a visit.

Thanks Matt for the pointer on visitor education & retention. Based on this, education could be argued to NOT be a benefit to visitors. Anyone else - are there any visitor benefits that come to mind other than enjoyment and a nice day out with the (kids, family, etc.)? How about benefits to animals of interacting with visitors (i.e., the opposite of 'visitors are stressful')?

Geoff Hosey, author of the attached, is on ResearchGate. You might reach out to him directly.

This one might also help with your efforts.

And another.

One more. There are others. Let me know directly if you need them.

Hi John. Thanks for all these. I actually have and have read all but the Wait article. I recently did a paper on HARs in zoo orangutans and gorillas that cites all of those authors (again except Waitt). Love to hear your personal experiences, perceptions on the issue - things you or colleagues have noted but that may not have ever made it to press.

Others - keeper anecdotes and stories? Experiences as a visitor? Lab tech/vet/caretaker experiences? Thanks again to all who've answered or who are just considering it.

Sorry, I did have the Waitt paper - I just didn't cite it in my own paper.

Hi Joshua. You might want to look at this question from the fields of anthrozoology and the humanities as they come at the topic from a very different reference point than most ethology or zoology perspectives. Anthrozoos is the peer-reviewed journal most of us use. You might also want to explore the topic of intersubjectivity, as per Scott Churchill at the Univ. of Dallas. He's written on this aspect with primates. Also, Barbara Smuts, Antonio Vitale in Italy, and Jonathan Balcombe at HSUS would be good people to read from. Not all of these references will have a zoo context, but I'm sure their references will point you in new directions.

Good luck!

Hi Josh...I think you are familiar with the work we do here at the Lester Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at Lincoln Park Zoo. Human-animal interactions are among several areas of interest for us and we have looked at this from several perspectives. (a) We have found relatively little effect of crowds on our apes' behavior across 10 years of study...we are writing up a paper right now that will summarize those findings; (b) Chelluri et al. (2013) describes an aspect of keeper-animal interaction in that even unscheduled, informal but positive interactions can have unintended consequences for the animals; (c) We examined the influence of building design on visitor behavior (e.g. Ross et al., 2012) but also have a forthcoming paper in final revisions that demonstrates that progressive building design can positively influence visitor attitudes about zoo apes and wildlife in general. To say that zoos have no positive effects on visitors is, in my view, shortsighted. The question is more aptly framed around evaluating potential positive and negative effects.

There is alot of work out there on the potential negative effects of zoo visitors on primate behavior/welfare but there is good reason to evaluate each of these studies in light of the specific facilities. Facilities that provide appropriate choices for zoo animals often do not have the negative effects described in some studies (see Ross et al., 2005 for a commentary on such a study).

In any case, it's an interesting field of study and I am glad you and others are taking a broad view of the potential questions. Sorry I will miss the ASP symposium.

Thanks Angeline for the pointer to Prof. Churchill. I just downloaded some of his papers - his conversations with bonobos approach is promising (also for my PhD on gestural communication, so double points). Steve - good to hear from you again. Thanks for the refs. I have (but have not yet read) the Chelluri etal paper. Sorry you can't make ASP, perhaps we can catch up at AZA in Orlando to discuss further.

Melissa. Thanks for the info. Do you have a link for the 2000 paper? Thanks for the term "occupational enrichment" - I'd not heard that before (although I was aware of the concept). Here's to a successful and informative symposium in Atlanta.

I realise that i'm probably too late to add to this, but i would argue that zoo visits can be educational in relation to knowledge about biodiversity and the personal actions required to help protect it. We have just completed a 30 world zoo and aquarium study (n=6,000+) that suggests this to be the case: 

Moss, A., Jensen, E., & Gusset, M. (2014). Evaluating the contribution of zoos and aquariums to Aichi Biodiversity Target 1. Conservation Biology, in press.

But, the downside to this is that i am not convinced that increased knowledge is necessarily a good predictor of an increased predisposition towards undertaking pro-biodiversity behaviours. That being the case, can the educational value of zoo visits be validly used as a counter-argument against any potential negative welfare issues associated with visitors. Or is increased knowledge a valuable outcome in its own right?

To this end, I have been planning to conduct a study that looks at the range of 'impacts' of animal viewing in zoos from both a zoo visitor and zoo animal perspective (both positive and negative, and ideally in real-time - i.e. we would assess both at the same time). To be honest, I haven't got too much further than this, so if anyone has any suggestions on how this might work (or warnings about how it definitely will not work!), I would be really interested to hear your thoughts.

Andrew. Thanks for the input. Sorry for the late response. I've been away at conferences and for some reason didn't receive any RG notifications of new activity on this (or any) questions. Your question of educational value offsetting potential negative welfare issues for zoo animals is tricky - sort of good of the few vs. the many, something that shows up repeatedly in any contentious welfare area. Increased knowledge may be valuable in & of itself, but I'd argue not really. As you mentioned it is unclear whether the knowledge translates to action and if it does not then that knowledge really does little (at least as far as the mission of zoos). If knowledge translates into behavioral change (rather than intention to change) then something beneficial is accomplished (e.g., conservation behaviors), but does that justify (so to speak) negative impacts on zoo apes for the benefit of their wild counterparts? I can't see any good way to answer that.

Re: an impact study from both human and animal perspectives, I can say you'll need multiple observers dedicated to observing one species and a good method to synchronize observations. I've tried synchronizing watchers, but even perfect chrono-synced observations still rely on humans conducting the obs at the exact same times, which is difficulty. In my experience, even a few seconds of variation between observers can lead to things being missed or at least not lined up in a proper cause-effect or interaction-exchange pattern. I can say, in my experience, trying to watch both humans and animals (in the zoo or the field) at the same time on my own was a definite failure.

Another suggestion is to consider more than just "impact" study variables (i.e., behavior changes, activity levels) to include social initiatives and actual interactions. For humans, a consideration of interactions with educational aspects of the environment also seems to be inline with your proposed study. Also maybe surveys of what visitors get out of their visit (subjectively). Love to hear more as you progress.