Smart museum and visitor satisfaction

Abstract

The digitization of museums has not only changed the way people view exhibitions but also transferred some rights to the hands of visitors to meet their needs for personalized services. Through a review of literature, we found that research related to smart museums presents an increasing trend in the recent 15 years. Progress has been made in the definition of smart museums, intelligent system construction, and intelligent narrative and service. However, there are few studies on systems of assessment criteria for smart museums, let alone on the relationship between how smart a museum is and a visitor’s satisfaction with the experience offered at the museum. Our purpose in this study was to establish assessment criteria for smart museums, and then to use the assessment criteria to explore the relationship between degree of museum intelligence and visitor satisfaction. We collected survey data from 602 visitors at Beijing’s Palace Museum and ran an exploratory factor analysis on the data. The results showed that six factors of museum intelligence, taken as assessment criteria, were positively correlated with visitor satisfaction. The technology integration factor had the greatest correlation, while module performance had the greatest impact on visitor satisfaction.