A location-based serious game in museum learning: a comparative field study of visitor experience, motivation, cognitive load, and objective learning outcomes

Introduction This study compared three museum visiting modalities—natural visits, audio guides, and a location-based serious game—in relation to visitor experience, motivation, cognitive load, and objective learning outcomes. Although serious games have increasingly been used in cultural heritage and museum education, less is known about how location-based serious games perform when compared with common visiting modalities in authentic museum settings. Methods A mixed-methods non-randomized comparative field study was conducted at Chengdu Museum with 105 adult visitors (35 participants in each condition). Data were collected through post-visit questionnaires and a 10-item exhibition-based knowledge test. A subset of 17 participants took part in semi-structured interviews. Results Participants in the serious game condition reported significantly higher engagement, perceived knowledge/learning, meaningful experience, and emotional connection than those in the natural visit and audio guide conditions. They also achieved higher objective knowledge-test scores. However, the motivational advantage of the serious game was limited to the comparison with the audio guide condition, while the cognitive-load components showed distinct patterns across conditions. Intrinsic cognitive load was higher in both the audio guide and serious game conditions than in natural visiting, extraneous cognitive load was lower in the serious game condition than in both comparison conditions, and germane cognitive load was higher in the serious game condition than in both comparison conditions. Given the limited internal consistency of these measures, the cognitive-load findings were interpreted as exploratory. Interview findings further indicated that narrative tasks, exhibit-based clues, spatial movement, and feedback were associated with active exploration and closer observation, while also involving additional task-related mental effort. Discussion These findings suggest that location-based serious games may support more active, meaningful, and learning-oriented museum experiences, while their motivational benefits and cognitive demands may vary across outcome domains.