Feeling ‘back there’: presence, emotional resonance, and identity repair in the three gorges migration memory museum

This study examines how migration memory museums transform exhibition encounters into identity-related meanings for visitors with lived experience of displacement. Drawing on Identity Process Theory, Narrative Transportation Theory and museum visitor studies, it develops and tests a Memory Cues–Psychological Processes–Emotional Responses–Identity (MPEI) model at the Hubei Three Gorges Migration Museum. Based on a face-to-face survey of 397 first-generation Three Gorges migrants after their visit, PLS-SEM results show that migration memory cues positively predict self-congruence and mental imagery, with a stronger effect on mental imagery. Both psychological processes enhance presence, but only presence significantly predicts emotional resonance; the direct effect of self-congruence is nonsignificant. Emotional resonance further predicts identity continuity and collective belonging, especially identity continuity. Mediation analysis confirms an immersive affective pathway in which memory cues are imaginatively processed, situated through presence and emotionalised before shaping identity outcomes. The study contributes to migration museum and visitor experience research by clarifying that identity-related effects do not arise automatically from historical representation or cognitive relevance. Rather, they depend on visitors’ embodied and emotionally bearable re-entry into migration memory. For practice, the findings suggest that migration memory curators should prioritise everyday mnemonic cues, situated narrative design and ethically bounded emotional engagement.