A Study on Visitors' Motivations and Satisfactions

Abstract

Museums are a type of cultural attractions with unique features and are increasingly being used as instruments for promoting tourism and boosting the regional economy. In order to better understand the museum market and achieve better service, the main objective of this study, based on earlier studies, is to examine whether the demographic characteristics of museum visitors made any significant differences to the motivations and satisfactions toward their museum experience. Jeju National Museum was chose to be the research site for being the only national cultural museum with large scale in Jeju. The choice of a single center for the collection of data was an attempt to place the research in a similar context for all visitors, so that any possible influence of contextual factors on variables studied could be avoid. A total of 274 samples were collected for a period of 3 weeks, from November 3 to November 19 2008, during the opening hours of the museum, by using survey method with self-administered survey questionnaire. Frequency, factor analysis, t-tests and ANOVA were utilized to analyze the collected data. The results of factor analyses identified five push factors domains and three pull factor domains underlying respondents' ratings. Satisfaction factors were developed by asking visitors to evaluate the degree of accomplishment of their expectation. It was found out that there were significant differences between/among gender, age, education background and place of residence in terms of motivations and satisfactions toward museum experience. The research also revealed that knowledge seeking, among other oush motivational dimensions, is the most important factor attracting tourists to Jeju National Museum. The study results hold useful implications for museum managers and researchers interested in studying how demographic characteristics impact visitors' motivations and satisfactions.