Role of Internal and External Museum Environment in Increasing Visitors’ Cognitive/Affective/Healthy Experiences and Loyalty

Abstract

There has not been much research on the impact of the museum environment on the formation of visitor loyalty. The purpose of this study is to discover the convoluted relationships among internal and external physical environments, involvement, knowledge value, satisfaction, and desire in forming visitor loyalty. A field survey was carried out at museums. A confirmatory factor analysis with the collected data showed that the measures used included an adequate level of measurement quality. The proposed model was revised by adding four meaningful approaches to improve the anticipatory ability and model fit. Results from the structural analysis demonstrated the criticality of both internal and external dimensions of physical environments in loyalty formation and identified the significant mediating impact of cognitive, evaluative, and motivational factors in our theoretical framework. Moreover, the relative importance of desire in increasing loyalty was found. Research contributions to the museum literature are discussed.