Conceptual Model and Analytical Framework of museum visitor experience

Museum as a tourist destination is known as a place for interacting objects, concepts and visitors. Most museums exist in order to attract and serve visitors – as many as possible. If we knew who visited museums and what meanings they make, from the experience we would know something about the role that museums play in societyToday, considering the audience-centered approach of museums, they are after visitor’s experience, and consider it as their research priority.

The visitors’ experience of museum, even though it is mentioned by John H Falk and Lynn D Dierking as a scientific term less than two decades ago, still consists of a great deal of rupture and ambiguity in explaining the main components and factors influencing the concept of museum visitors experience. The present study is a descriptive research with a qualitative approach with the aim of presenting a conceptual model and an analytical framework of the visitors’ experience in the museum. The method used in the collection process is a systematic review of knowledge associated with visiting studies with an emphasis on the experience of the visitor. Referred sources in this regard generally over the period from 1922 to the present, and emphasize the use of first hand resources. Required data are collected by documentary and library studies. This paper, as a meta- study research, with meta synthesis and the analysis of the results of prior-art theories and research in this regard, seeks to answer the concept of the visitors’ museum experience, first the main concept associated with the subject of evaluation and definition and then, while monitoring the genealogy of the relationship between the subject and the museum, the importance and place of the museum’s experience, the satisfactory experience in this area is expand and explained. Then, using previous researches and scientists’ and scholars’ point of view, the factors of the emergence and evolution of the individual visitor experience have been analyzed.

Analyzing these findings, the conceptual framework of the Museum Visitor Experience and the formation of its factors and categories are presented. Hereby the triggering factors are divided into two groups, in-person and out-person. In-person factors include a set of previous knowledge and experiences, motivation, engagement, interests and expectations, personal identity and individual preferences. Out-person factors are divided into three groups of physical-environmental factors, socio - cultural factors and time. Physical-environmental factors include spatial and visual elements which are related to the individual sense of being in the environment, and socio - cultural factors include variables in social and the cultural contexts. In a sense, the sociocultural context described in the previous chapter serves as a bridge between the individual’s sense of self, the personal context, and the physical context, the individual must live within. Time as an external third factor is considered as an effective variable since it is a platform for the formation and survival of experience.