Abstract
This study explores motivations of visitors to the Imperial War Museum (North and South), United Kingdom, with a view to understanding why people visit museums associated with conflicts. Though museums are part of the education and leisure industry, the distinction between education and leisure is often blurred. There are a number of reasons why people visit museums. Motives of museum visitors can be grouped into intrinsic and extrinsic factors. This study analysed the extent to which museum visitors are motivated by extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Semi-structured interviews with visitors were conducted w at the Imperial Museum of War (North and South), United Kingdom. The findings do establish that extrinsic motivations are more dominant than the intrinsic ones for visiting the Imperial War Museum. The importance of extrinsic factors in motivating museum visitors would suggest that providing an opportunity for a good day out has more appeal to the visitors than the collections in the museum for the average visitors. The experiencing of museum in its totality is more important than the individual collections or the theme of the museum to the mainstream visitor. This work has made a contribution to understanding visitor motivations, which are multi-facetted, complex and not necessarily fully understood by the visitors themselves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alderson, W., & Low, S. (1996). Interpretation of historic sites (rev 2nd ed.). Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
Anderson, D. (1995). Gradgrind driving Queen Mab’s chariot: What museums have (and have not) learnt from adult education. In A. Chadwick & A. Stannett (Eds.), Museums and the education of adults (pp. 11–33). Leicester: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education.
Black, G. (2005). The engaging museum: Developing museums for visitor involvement. London: Routledge.
Blundell Jones, P. (2003). War stories: Daniel Libeskind’s trophy building for the imperial War Museum is a key element in the regeneration of Salford’s defunct docks. The Architectural Review. Accessed 12 Jul, 2010. Available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3575/is_1271_213/ai_97232974/
Bowdin, G., Allen, J., O’Toole, W., Harris, R., & McDonell, I. (2006). Events management (2nd ed.). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Cameron, C., & Gatewood, J. (2003). Seeking numinous experiences in the unremembered past. Ethnology, 42, 2003.
Davies, S. (2005). Still popular: Museums and their visitors 1994–2004. Cultural Trends, 14(1), 67–105.
Davies, A., & Prentice, R. (1995). Conceptualizing the latent visitor to heritage attractions. Tourism management, 16(7), 491–500.
Denscombe, M. (2007). The good research guide for small-scale social research projects (3rd ed.). Maidenhead: McGraw Hall.
Falk, J., & Dierking, L. (1992). The museum experience. Washington: Whalesback.
Falk, J., Dierking, L., & Holland, D. (1995). What do we think people learn in museums? In J. H. Falk & L. D. Dierking (Eds.), Public institutions for personal learning: Establishing a research agenda (pp. 17–22). Washington DC: American Association of Museums, Technical Information Service.
Garrod, B., & Fyall, A. (2000). Managing heritage tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 27(3), 682–708.
Goulding, C. (2000). The museum environment and the visitor experience. European Journal of Marketing, 34(3/4), 261–278. 1(10), 745–760.
Gutting, G. (Ed.). (2005). Continental philosophy of science. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Habbermas, J. (2005). Knowledge and human interests: A general perspective. In: Gutting G (ed) Continental philosophy of science (pp. 310–318). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Harold, J. (2005). Between intrinsic and extrinsic value. Journal of Social Philosophy, XXXVI.1(Spring 2005), 85–105.
Harrison, P., & Shaw, R. (2004). Consumer satisfaction and post-purchase intentions: An exploratory study of museum visitors. International Journal of Arts Management, 6(2), 23–32.
Hayes, D., & Slater, A. (2002). Rethinking the missionary position—the quest for sustainable audience development strategies. Managing Leisure, 7, 1–17.
Hood, M. G. (1983, April). Staying away: Why people choose not to visit museums. Museum News, 50–57.
Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1994a). Museums and their visitors. London: Routledge.
Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1994b). Audiences: A curatorial dilemma. In E. Hooper-Greenhill (Ed.), The educational role of the museum. London, New York: Routledge.
Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1995). A museum educator’s perspective. In A. Chadwick & A. Stannett (Eds.), Museums and the education of adults (pp. 49–64). Leicester: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education.
IWM Website: http://www.iwm.org.uk/ (accessed 13/07/2010)
Jakle, J. (1985). The tourist: travel in twentieth century North America. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Jansen-Verbeke, M., & Van Redom, J. (1996). Scanning museum visitor, urban tourism marketing. Annals of Tourism Research, 23(2), 364–75.
Lennon, J., & Foley, M. (2006). Dark tourism. The attraction of death and disaster. London: Thomson.
McIntyre, C. (2009). Museum and art gallery experience space characteristics: An entertaining show or a contemplative bathe? International Journal of Tourism Research, 11(2), 155–170.
McLean, F. (1993). Marketing in museums: A contextual analysis. Museum Management and Curatorship, 12(1), 11–27.
McLean, F. (1994). Services marketing: The case of museums. Service Industries Journal, 14(2), 190–203.
Merriman, N. (1991). Beyond the glass case: The past, the heritage and the public in Britain. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Museum Management and Curatorship, 21(2006), 44–57.
MLA Programmes Research Paper: Markets and Users. (2005). http://www.mla.gov.uk/programmes/renaissance/marketuset (Accessed 18/06/2010)
Mohr, K., Backman, K. F., Gahan, L. W., & Backman, S. J. (1993). An investigation of festival motivations and event satisfaction by visitor type. Festival Management & Event Tourism, 1, 89–97.
MORI. (2004). Visitors to museums and galleries, research study conducted for the museums. London: Libraries & Archives Council.
Moussouri, T. (2002). A context for the development of learning outcomes in museums, libraries and archives. Prepared for the Learning Impact Research Project Team, Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, University of Leicester. Also available from http://www.le.ac.uk/museumstudies/research/rcmgpublicationsandprojects.html
Orr, T. (2004). The information-seeking behaviour of museum visitors a review of literature ABSTRACT: The dynamics of museum visitor. home.earthlink.net/~toriorr/ROL_MuseumVisitors.doc (Accessed 18/06/2010)
Poria, Y., Reichel, A., & Biran, A. (2005). Heritage site management motivations and expectations. Annals of Tourism Research, 33(1), 162–178.
Prentice, R., Davies, A., & Beeho, A. (1997). Seeking generic motivations for visiting and not visiting museums and like cultural attractions. Museum Management and Curatorship, 16(1), 45–70.
Reiss, S. (2004). Multifaceted nature of intrinsic motivation: The theory of 16 basic desires. Review of General Psychology, 8(3), 179–193.
Reiss, S. (2005). Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation at 30: Unresolved scientific issues. The Behavior Analyst, 28(1), 1–14.
Richards, G. (Ed.). (2007). Cultural tourism: Global and local perspectives. London: Haworth Hospitality.
Ryan, C. (Ed.). (1997). The tourist experience. London: Thomson Learning.
Sarantakos, S. (2002). Social research. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave.
Screven, C. (1976). Exhibit evaluation—A goal referenced approach. Curator: The Museum Journal, 19(4), 271–290.
Shackley, M. (1999). Visitor management. In A. Leask & I. Yeoman (Eds.), Heritage visitor attractions: An operations management perspective (pp. 69–82). London: Thomson Learning.
Slater, A. (2006). ‘Escaping to the gallery’: Understanding the motivations of visitors to galleries. International Journal of Non-profit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 12, 149–162.
Thyne, M. (2001). The importance of values research for non-profit organisations: The motivation-based values of museum visitors. International Journal of Non-profit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 6(2), 116–30.
Timothy, D., & Boyd, S. (2003). Heritage tourism. Harlow: Prentice Hall.
Uysal, M., Gahan, L., and Martin, B. (1993) as cited in Bowdin, G. et al. (2006).
Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th ed.). London: Sage.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Powell, R., Kokkranikal, J. (2015). Motivations and Experiences of Museum Visitors: The Case of the Imperial War Museum, United Kingdom. In: Katsoni, V. (eds) Cultural Tourism in a Digital Era. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15859-4_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15859-4_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-15858-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-15859-4
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)