Identity-related motivations online: Falk–s framework applied to US museum websites

Abstract

In his book ‘Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience’, John Falk examines the visitor experience as it relates to what he terms ‘identity-related motivations’: a series of specific reasons used by visitors when choosing to attend a museum, based on their particular needs and values. Through thousands of interviews with museum visitors, Falk identifies five essential types of museum visitor and the internal motivations that drive repeat visitation as: experience seeker, explorer, facilitator, recharger and hobbyist/professional. This study utilises Falk’s framework in an online survey of 23 museum websites. This is the first survey to utilise Falk’s framework online, the first focused primarily on small- and medium-sized organisations, and the first US-based study to view the data in aggregate. This paper presents high-level results from the survey, as well as an in-depth look at online audiences for one museum from the project.