Virtual Reality in Museums: Does It Promote Visitor Enjoyment and Learning?

Abstract

Museums have shown keen interest in providing XR experiences, in particular, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), as part of their exhibitions. However, little is known about how visitors feel about such experiences and how exposure to them affects visitor interest in topics. In this study, the authors conducted a pre/post-usage survey among visitors at a museum with VR installation. Four research models were compared to determine the most suitable model for studying gratifications. Our results showed that visitors expect to be entertained, yet they are less entertained than expected. VR provides positive learning effects, and scholars can rely on post-usage measures to assess the experience.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 See: https://www.deutsches-museum.de/en.

2 Note: To assess the robustness of the findings, we ran further regressions in which we included the personal importance scores as additional control variables into the models 2 and 4. Model 4’s results stayed very similar; In model 2, all IV effect sizes increased, yet multicollinearity might have biased the results (several VIF values close to 5). R squared values stayed substantially below the one reported in model 1, indicating that our conclusion about model 1 being the “superior” model remains.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hamza Shahab

Hamza Shahab is a PhD scholar at University of Malaya, Malaysia. He has been working as a Lecturer at University of Wah since 2014. His main areas of research interest are digital marketing and tourism. He has publications in several well-reputed journals and worked as an assistant editor of UWJMS.

Mozard Mohtar

Mozard Mohtar is attached to the Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Malaya. He received his PhD (Marketing) from Aston University. His research areas are advertising and consumer psychology which he published in journals such as Journal of Consumer Marketing and International Journal of Consumer Studies.

Ezlika Ghazali

Ezlika Ghazali is an Associate Professor at the University of Malaya in Malaysia. Her PhD is from Warwick University in England. Her research interests include consumer behavior, switching barriers, augmented-reality marketing, online retailing, sustainable marketing, and social entrepreneurship. Ezlika has authored over 130 academic articles, conferences, and books.

Philipp A. Rauschnabel

Philipp A. Rauschnabel is a Professor of Digital Marketing and Media Innovation at Universität der Bundeswehr, Munich (Germany), Associate Researcher at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, and teaches XR Marketing courses at MCI Innsbruck. He is the author of the first studies on consumers’ adoption of AR technologies. Website: philipprauschnabel.com

Andrea Geipel

Andrea Geipel is deputy head of the digitalization department and head of the VRlab at the Deutsches Museum. At the Munich Center for Technology in Society (Technische Universität München) she finished her PhD on the impact of YouTube's platform policies on expertise in science communication in 2021.