Exploring the motivations of young museum users through identifying personas based on Bartle’s taxonomy of players

Abstract Services tailored according to users’ unique preferences can attract users’ continuous attention. In view of the fact that studies have shown that gamification can improve the engagement and satisfaction of young museum visitors, combined with the persona technique, the Bartle’s taxonomy of player types as a gamification-based model hopefully enlighten administrators and researchers to understand the issue of museum visitor composition. So, the persona selection process was described in more detail in the study, as well as triangulated data was collected, including service safari, shadowing, retrospective interviews, and experience cards. This research found that the intrinsic motivations of Gamification-based personas are both distinct and shared. In the context of the museum, these motivations vary across the four personas. Explorer values autonomy in discovering and understanding museum offerings, Socializer seeks relatedness by engaging with others both inside and outside the museum, Attacker pursues competence through challenging and competing against fellow museum-goers, while the Achiever gains competence through personal accomplishments within museum activities. Despite these differences, some intrinsic motivations overlap. Explorer and Socializer are driven by museum exploration, while Socializer and Achiever value social connections within the museum context. Achiever and Attacker take pride in their accomplishments, and Explorer and Attacker are curious about the museum’s unknowns. This illustrates that in meaningful gamification, the distinct intrinsic motivation is the key motivation for people’s engagement in museum activities in different ways, and this is their real motivation for entering the museum. This research recommends that it is not necessarily to develop different kinds of museum exhibitions for each motivation or combination of motivations but to find methods to use the services to meet individual needs. Considering the 40 ancient building cultural relics protection institutions in Beijing, this research can inform other historic house museums and help validate and refine the proposed improvements.