Motivations to Visit a Museum – Why Do You Visit While Others Don’t Go?

Abstract

Museums are critical for resource conservation, while they can provide a recreational setting and enhance visitor’s leisure experience. Museums also play an important role in the hospitality and tourism industry, as they attract domestic and international travelers. Museums serve as social, cultural, and economic enrichment. The purpose of the research included understanding the motivations to visit the Antalya Museum in Turkey in order to suggest a marketing communication design. Underpinned by the theory of planned behavior, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 85 visitors and 85 non-visitors who were selected by a purposeful sampling in order to elicit salient belies on their museum visits. The results showed three types of beliefs. With respect to behavioral beliefs, the most frequently reported advantage of visiting the museum was learning, followed by experiencing exhibits, while more than half of the visitors and non-visitors did not identify any disadvantages. Regarding normative beliefs, both the visitors and non-visitors perceived that their family members and friends supported their museum visits, whereas more than half of them did not recognize anyone who disagreed with their museum visits. Concerning perceived control beliefs, both the visitors and non-visitors explained that transportation and location were the major facilitator for their visits, whilst nearly half of the visitors did not report any obstacles to their visits. It is suggested that the motivations to visit the museum, such as learning, family support, and accessibility, should be incorporated into the design of communication messages in order to promote visiting the museum.

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Author Information
Naoko Yamada, Antalya International University, Turkey
Aiko Yoshino, San Francisco State University, United States
Jackson Wilson, San Francisco State University, United States

• Category: Hawaii Conference Series 2017, Hawaii Conference Series 2017 1, Hawaii Conference Series 2017 1 - Posters, IICSSHawaii2017, Poster Presentation
• Tag: Other

Posted by James Alexander Gordon

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