Factors Affecting Cultural Transmission in Museum Tourism: An Empirical Study with Mediation Analysis

Consistent with global trends in cultural tourism, museum tourism has emerged as a popular form of cultural tourism that has increasingly drawn the significant attention of scholars as the target of academic research. The tourists’ cultural experience can affect their evaluation of the specific visit and subsequent behavior. While previous researchers have paid more attention to the mechanism of visitors’ post-visit behaviors, cultural transmission as a dependent variable has received scarce attention. This study examines factors influencing college students’ behavior in communicating specific museum cultural content after a visit. It also identifies the mediating mechanism underlying the relationships between cultural transmission and its antecedents. The purposive questionnaire in a highly structured survey was distributed online among college students. A total of 195 usable responses were drawn. A quantitative survey methodology was employed, including Chi-square analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling. The results show that: (1) the determinants of college students’ cultural transmission behavior are cultural experience, cultural identity, and satisfaction, which explains 59% of the variance of cultural transmission; (2) the impact of cultural experience on cultural transmission was mediated by cultural identity and satisfaction (it includes a serial mediation effect as the effect of cultural experience on satisfaction flowed through cultural identity, where student satisfaction mediated the impact of cultural identity on cultural transmission); and (3) college students pursuing the liberal arts present statistically different preferences in visiting museums when compared with science and engineering students. The discussion and implications present theoretical advancements in elucidating the mechanism of visitors’ cultural communication processes and recommend the use of technology-driven innovations for improvements in post-visit activities for cultural transmission.