Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Identifying the motivation of visitors in museums allows to separate groups with different needs. Thanks to this, it is possible to meet these needs more accurately what could broaden the audience. What is important is to look at the motivation of the audience from the angle of various possibilities, e.g. choosing other cultural institutions because museum doesn’t operate in a vacuum but on a specific market of services. Assuming this point of view, as a Copernicus Science Center, we piloted a study on the motivation of the visitors in Warsaw’s cultural institutions. The largest museums in Warsaw such as the National Museum, the Zachęta gallery and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews took part in the pilot. Our aim was to grasp the universal structure of deeper psychological motivations to visit institutions of different profiles by a shared audience. The study was inspired by works on motivation of visitors conducted by authors such as M.G. Hood and above all, J. Falk. It contained significant modifications, firstly distinguishing a separate block of motivations of the caretakers taking into account the children with whom the museum is visited. The results turned out to be quite unobvious. The structure of motivation of adult visitors was not statistically confirmed as it was assumed but the structure of motivation for children was demonstrated. The structure was also slightly different than assumed in the theoretical model. This preliminary stage provided valuable conclusions which enabled continuation of the research process.