Determinants of museum visitors' loyalty

Cultural tourism is an important and fast developing type of tourism, in terms of its cultural, social and economic impacts. The museum market, including over 40,000 museums worldwide, represents one of the largest segments of the cultural tourism market. Museums face growing challenges, and are competing for visitors, resources, volunteers, and funding to maintain facilities and continue operating. Additionally, the educational and cultural interests of museum visitors, the exhibits they visit, the activities in which they participate, and their interactions with museum collections and interpreters play important roles in museums' long-term sustainability because, without visitors, museums would struggle to survive. This study developed and tested an integrated, dynamic model of museum visitor behavior, which was fulfilled by successfully integrating theories & models into a comprehensive structural model across three temporal stages. Results favorably identified significant interrelationships among pull motivation, perception of service quality, perception of value and overall satisfaction that played concurrent positive roles in determining visitors' loyalty.

Autorentext

Chi Ming Hsieh is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Tourism, Recreation & Leisure Studies at National Dong Hwa University. He had several years of working experience in rural tourism in Taiwan. His primary research interests focus on general tourism and recreation system, tourist behavior, and service quality in tourism & recreation industry.