Discovering the determinants of museum visitors’ immersion into experience: the impact of interactivity, expectations, and skepticism

ABSTRACT

The paper explores two dimensions of visitors’ immersion into museum experience: aesthetics and escapism. Following the socio-cultural activity theory, it examines the impact of interactive technology available in museums on aesthetic and escapist experience. Additionally, it examines the role of hedonic expectations and the level of visitor scepticism (or its absence) towards museums with regard to immersion into the experience. Quantitative research was carried out on a sample of 313 museum visitors surveyed in two Croatian cities. Partial least structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used for model testing. The results showed that interactive technology enhances immersion, also helping less sceptical visitors as well as those with hedonic expectations get immersed in the museum experience quickly. Aesthetic experience can enhance escapist experience. While both dimensions of immersion into experience contribute to the overall satisfaction, the aesthetic experience of museum visits was found to contribute to it more.

KEYWORDS:

• Museums
• visitor experience
• escapism
• aesthetics
• interactivity
• scepticism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).