Motivations and experiences of museum visitors: The case of the Imperial War Museum, United Kingdom

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.