Roles of motivations, past experience, perceptions of service quality, value and satisfaction in 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. Approximately 450 museums in Taiwan have attracted an annual visitor number equivalent to half of the entire population of Taiwan. 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.The first purpose of the study, which was to develop and test an integrated, dynamic model of museum visitor behavior (N = 512), was fulfilled by successfully integrating two theories (push and pull motivation theory, destination loyalty theory) and two models (recreational behavior model, service quality model) into a comprehensive structural model across three temporal stages. Results also 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. The second purpose of this study, which was to assess the moderating effects of socio-demographic and travel behavior variables on the hypothesized relationships in the structural model, was partially fulfilled by recognizing the significant moderating effects of membership status, ticket type (one indicator of visitor type), and length of stay on three paths (perception of service quality--satisfaction, perception of value--loyalty, satisfaction--loyalty). Thus, to the primary research question---did the National Museum of Natural Science in Taiwan deliver the appropriate quality of service to match its visitors' needs---the answer was "yes" and as the research also showed that these visitors were loyal.The implication of this research is that museum managers should examine both push and pull motivations simultaneously to accommodate their visitors' expectations (personal needs and growth, professional purposes, and an enjoyable gathering with family and friends) through providing sufficient levels of the recognized service (professional training and development programs attended by museum staff members, physical facilities and equipment, provision of understandable and sufficient information, and caring and individualized attention) to increase visitors' revisit intentions and assure the museum's continued operation and success. Managers should pay attention to the needs of nonmembers, and provide incentives for short-stay visitors to extend their stays, in an effort to enhance their perceptions of value (reasonable price, valuable exhibits, helpful activities, and useful services). Suggested directions for future research include: (1) an examination of a wider respondent base across other museums or cultural tourism services (e.g., historical sites) (2) the selection and development of a well-established measurement scale of service quality and other factors, using a qualitative approach and (3) the selection of other potential moderating variables and affected paths.