Ice, snow and polar bears: Decision making among professional guides in the Arctic

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to study how Arctic Nature Guides make decisions in uncertain and ambiguous situations. In this context, guides face factors related to the guests’ expectancies to the guided tour, external risks, and aspects that influence their decisions. The terms crisis and crisis management are utilised to understand the contextual components throughout the decision-making process. This study relies on data gathered through a qualitative method. The data is based on 9 interviews from guides with work experience as guides at Svalbard and education through the Arctic Nature Guide study at Svalbard. The findings show that when conducting decisions in crisis scenarios, the guides seek to avoid the fallacies caused by cognitive heuristics, yet they use these cognitive cues to stimulate recognition when facing risks. Through intuition guides produce their perception of the situation at hand. Experience and competence are important variables in recognising circumstances that are similar or have similar patterns as previous encounters. The guide uses a mix of their intuitive and analytical decision-making, where the analytical perspective is mostly used in the planning phase and when projecting the future status, while the intuitive in the moment where a decision is made. This connection constructs a reliable approach to decisions when confronting risks. Preparation is a key influence for a rapid solution to the problem, although the intuition solves it ultimately.