A Comparative Analysis of Tour Guide Explanation Styles

This study aims to clarify the characteristics and structure of explanation styles used by tour guides. We collected free-text answers from 33 professional tour guides working in the Okayama region of Japan and conducted both qualitative and quantitative analyses focusing on explanation perspectives (factual description, background explanation, narratives, visitor-oriented expression, and affective expression) and the amount of information provided. The results reveal clear differences in explanation styles among guides, and that the inclusion of background explanations and narratives significantly increases the information volume. The explanation styles also varied depending on the question type: historical and cultural questions tended to prompt longer and deeper explanations. These findings demonstrate that explanation by tour guides is not simple information transmission, but a cognitive act of value construction that gives meaning to tourist sites. Furthermore, the analytical framework developed in this study provides practical implications for guide training and evaluation. This study contributes a new approach to visualizing the structural characteristics of tour guide explanation behavior.