Mapping the olfactory mindscape in museums: a grounded theory investigation into smellscape perception and its impact on cultural tourism experience

Ethnographic museums are increasingly visited as cultural tourism destinations, yet their exhibition design remains predominantly visual, overlooking the potential of smell to shape tourists’ emotional engagement, memory, and well-being. While smellscape research has grown in environmental psychology, a process-oriented model explaining how visitors perceive and interpret culturally-coded odors in museum settings is still lacking. This study aims to investigate the cognitive-affective process underlying tourists’ smellscape perception in an ethnographic museum and to construct a theoretical model that explains how olfactory experiences influence cultural meaning-making and behavioral responses. Adopting a constructivist grounded theory approach, we integrated participatory smell-walks with in-depth semi-structured interviews. Data were collected from 120 visitors at the Yunnan Ethnographic Museum (China). All participants completed a smell-walk and survey; 30 participated in follow-up interviews. Analysis followed open, axial, and selective coding using NVivo, with member-checking and researcher triangulation ensuring rigor. The analysis yielded a five-category theoretical model: (1) Smell Perception—detection and description of odors; (2) Smell Association—cognitive links to behaviors, memories, and environments (behavioral, subjective, perceptual, environmental); (3) Smellscape Evaluation—assessments of intensity, appropriateness, preference, safety, and harmony; (4) Environmental Expectation—desires for authenticity, atmospheric resonance, and emotional engagement; and (5) Cultural Export—potential for heritage innovation and enhanced tourist experience. The model delineates a dynamic pathway from sensory input to meaning-making and behavioral outcomes. This study provides the first grounded theory model of smellscape perception in an ethnographic museum from a tourism perspective. It advances sensory tourism research by demonstrating how strategically curated smellscapes can deepen emotional engagement, strengthen cultural memory, and enhance visitor well-being. The findings offer an evidence-based framework for designing multisensory heritage experiences that move beyond visual-centric practices, with direct implications for museum management and destination marketing.