Managing motivations and satisfaction in Dark Immersive Theatre Experiences

Dark Immersive Theatre Experiences (DITE) have been growing in popularity in recent years as an innovative product that combines darkness with immersive theatre, attracting individuals all over the world who seek new and enticing experiences. This study aims to develop predictive models of participant satisfaction in DITE based on their underlying motivations. Based on Principal Component Analysis, we were able to identify five motivational components: "dark intensity", "survival", "immersion”, "theatre", and "unwinding", which explained 66.7% of the motivation’s variation. Furthermore, we performed multiple linear regression models to predict participants’ overall satisfaction in DITE. The final predictive models allowed to explain 66.0% of satisfaction’s variance, composed by six independent variables: "novel experience", "captivating plot", "push limits", "to have fun", "coparticipation", and "hyper-realistic experience". Our work contributes for optimizing DITE by presenting specific factors that allow to enhance satisfaction. Our data provide DITE managers useful information to improve and optimize experiences in such a way that enhances participant’s satisfaction and further increase their interest to such experiences.