This study took place during a contemporary circus festival to investigate the audience experience of contemporary circus street performances. Specifically, we explored the impact of expertise on audience experience (emotion, intellect, novelty, place, interaction, and technique) and performance evaluation (liking and self‐perceived understanding). Based on the participants’ self‐report frequency of previous attendance of contemporary circus and current skill level in contemporary circus, we divided a sample of 349 adult audience members into three groups: low expertise, medium expertise, and high expertise. Expertise had a significant effect on audience experience; the high‐expertise participants were more intellectually stimulated than both the medium‐ and low‐expertise participants. Expertise had negligible effect on performance evaluation, but we note that performance reception could have been based on different interpretation styles; that is, more literal in participants lower in expertise and more metaphoric in participants higher in expertise. Finally, we found a clear positive association between audience experience and performance evaluation.

中文翻译：

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当代马戏团观众体验的现场研究：关于观众专业知识影响的探索性研究

这项研究是在当代马戏团节日期间进行的，旨在调查观众对当代马戏团街头表演的体验。具体来说，我们探讨了专业知识对受众体验（情感，理智，新颖性，位置，互动性和技术）和绩效评估（喜欢和自我理解）的影响。根据参与者以前参加过当代马戏团的自我报告频率和当代马戏团的当前技能水平，我们将349名成人观众成员的样本分为三类：低专业知识，中专业知识和高专业知识。专业知识对听众体验有重大影响；与中，低专业参与者相比，高专业参与者在智力上受到了更多的刺激。专业知识对绩效评估的影响可忽略不计，但是我们注意到，表演接受可能是基于不同的解释风格。也就是说，专业知识水平较低的参与者的文字更多，而专业知识水平较高的参与者的隐喻更多。最后，我们发现听众体验与绩效评估之间存在明显的正相关关系。