Survey on the Impact of Historical Museum Exhibition Forms on Visitors’ Perceptions Based on Eye-Tracking

Exhibition design in museum space is of great significance in enhancing cultural attraction, visitor experience, and heritage conservation. With the growth of spiritual and cultural needs, the construction of museums has increased, but the quality of exhibitions has been improved to a limited extent. In order to explore visitors’ perceptual experience in terms of display forms, this paper combines eye-tracking technology and subjective evaluation to select three display forms, namely, stand-alone display form, combined picture and object form, and combined 3D object and physical form, for the research. Combining field research, eye-tracking experiments, and subjective questionnaire evaluations, this study explores the relationship between visual perception and emotional experience in different display formats. The results showed that (1) the effects of different display formats differed between visual perception and emotional experience, and (2) there is some correlation between visual perception and emotional experience. Specifically, the number of fixations sessions was negatively correlated with fun, richness, comfort, and attractiveness and positively correlated with authenticity, while the average fixation time was positively correlated with the former and negatively correlated with authenticity. Combining the two dimensions, the study concluded that visitors’ experience satisfaction and preference are high in response to the form combining 3D objects and physical objects; the exhibition form of combining pictures and physical objects produces a higher degree of cognition in a short period of time; and the stand-alone display form has the lowest degree of preference, with poor information retention among visitors. It is hoped that this study will provide some reference for the use of exhibition forms in historical museums.