Using Identity-Related Visit Motivations as a Tool for Understanding Adult Zoo and Aquarium Visitors' Meaning-Making

Considerable time and effort have been invested in understanding the motivations of museum visitors. Many investigators have sought to describe why people visit museums, resulting in a range of descriptive categorizations. Recently, investigators have begun to document the connections between visitors' entering motivations and their exiting learning. Doering and Pekarik have proposed starting with the idea that visitors are likely to enter a museum with an “entry narrative” (1996; see also Pekarik, Doering and Karns 1999). Doering and Pekarik argue that these entry narratives are likely to be self-reinforcing, directing both learning and behavior, since visitors' perceptions of satisfaction will be directly related to experiences that resonate with their entering narrative. Falk took these ideas one step further and proposed that—although people have diverse reasons for choosing to visit museums—these diverse reasons tended to cluster around a relatively small number of motivational categories (2006). These categories appeared to be related to visitors' desires to use the museum for fulfilling identity-related needs. Each of us assumes many identities over the course of our life. Some of our identities are enduring and long-lasting; others are more ephemeral and situation-specific; all help us navigate through the complexities of life.

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