La place des technologies interactives de médiation innovantes dans les musées : analyse des effets de la présence d’un robot sur les comportements des visiteurs

Goals / research questions This research assesses the extent to which a robot introduced into a museum may affect the visitor experience. More specifically, it examines how the presence of a robot impacts visitors' actual behavior (duration of the visit and participation) and post-visit evaluations (value and satisfaction), whether they interact with the robot or not. • Methodology / approach Our hypotheses were tested on data collected at the Centre International de l'Art Parietal Lascaux IV through a survey sent to visitors after their visit and recording of their visit behavior (duration of visit, duration of interactions with the robot, etc.). • Results Our results suggest that interacting with a robot can enrich the visitor experience (longer duration, active participation in activities provided in the scenography, improvement of perceived value). However, they also show that such a device can be a source of dissatisfaction for visitors who do not interact with it during busy times. • Managerial issues Our study sheds light on the positive and negative effects of a robot in a place welcoming consumers. It also encourages the use of metrics such as visit duration (total duration, sub-space visit duration, duration of the interaction) to assess the effectiveness of technological devices and analyze, in addition to interaction situations, the effects produced on visitors who do not interact with the devices. • Originality This research has two particularities. It deals with an innovative mediation device whose effects have been little studied. From a methodological point of view, it is based on a combination of behavioral (150,000 visit routes) and declarative data (post-visit survey), which are usually treated separately in the literature.