Motivations of visitors to visit museums: A comparison study of museum visitors in the west and in Thailand

Abstract

Museums today generally see the importance of looking into people's motivations of visiting museums. The motivations of people might be influenced by their cultural background. This paper tries to analyse the motivations of Thai people who visit museums in Thailand from a Western perspective. Different from the West where there are more systematic studies on the motivations of people to visit museums, there are not many studies in Thailand that look into the motivations of Thai people visiting museums in Thailand. The author of the paper attempts to analyse the differences in accordance with the findings of two studies of the motivations of Western people in the West and those of two museums in Thailand. By knowing the differences, the author of the paper hopes that the analysis will help museum administrators, in particular Thai administrators, to better understand the role of museums among people of different cultural backgrounds and to think of different strategies to attract them to visit their museums. © 2014 Taylor & Francis Group.