Visit Motivation as Part of Visitors’ Personal Context in a Science Museum

Abstract Visit motivation is a multidimensional construct that can be viewed as a convergence of various elements of a visitor’s personal context that lead him or her to visit a particular museum on a particular day. We explored associations between six visit motivation categories, four personal characteristics and three visit-related characteristics that have previously been linked to visit motivation and museum learning. Our main aim was to increase our understanding of how visit motivation is embedded in visitors’ wider personal context. Results showed an effect of visit company on two ‘social’ visit motivation categories, and positive correlations between three different visit motivation categories and visitors’ interest in science, their self-efficacy beliefs, their visit frequency and their visit strategy. Our findings help to better understand how visitors’ personal and visit-related characteristics are associated with their motivation to visit a science museum, which can ultimately support museum professionals in providing customized visit experiences.