Seeking Generic Motivations for Visiting and Not Visiting Museums and Like Cultural Attractions

Overview

This paper seeks to demonstrate remedies for two deficiencies in literature on museum visiting. Firstly, it attends to generic rather than situationally-contingent motivations. Secondly, it considers non-visitors as well as visitors. Particular attention is also given to constraints on visiting and how people try to ‘consume’ cultural attractions. The discussion is resourced from a sample survey conducted in Edinburgh, a city which provides many opportunities (of which many are free of charge in terms of admission) for visiting museums and like cultural attractions.