Visiting heritage museums with children: Chinese parents’ motivations

Mao-Ying Wu · Geoffrey C. Wall

55 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Heritage Tourism

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Museums and Cultural Heritage Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation Cultural Identity and Heritage

Abstract

Museums have been widely considered as informal educational sites. Studies about families in museums heavily concentrate on the cognitive aspects and the learning outcomes in science museums and art galleries. Compared with previous research, this study emphasizes four distinctive themes: a focus on the pre-trip stage of the museum visit, museums depicting local heritage, a Chinese context, and attention to social and cultural issues. In detail, this study explores the motivations of Chinese parents who take their children to a cluster of heritage museums at the southern end of China’s Grand Canal, a newly designated world heritage site in Hangzhou. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with parents visiting the museums with their children. It was found that the key push factors include education and learning, relaxation, creating positive experience for children, relationship enhancement (quality time with children) and extended family obligations. Free admission, the innovative displays, the opportunities for personal interaction and the quality of the environment both within and surrounding the museums were important pull factors. The family market, particularly the extended family, may be particularly important in China given their importance in Chinese culture based on Confucian teaching.

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References

2006Qualitative research: Methods in the social sciences 2004Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in the 2003 UNESCO Convention: a critical appraisal 2011A study of experience expectations of museum visitors 2003Dialogic inquiry in life science conversations of family groups in a museum 2009Timing and Tracking: Unlocking Visitor Behavior 1994Family behavior and learning in informal science settings: A review of the research 2004The nature of learning and its implications for research on learning from museums 2001Experiential Cultural Tourism: Museums & the Marketing of the New Romanticism of Evoked Authenticity

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