When Digital Heritage Becomes Cognitively Demanding: Digital Complexity, Spatial Narrative Richness, and Sustainable Decision-Making

As digital heritage platforms become increasingly immersive and information-rich, digital enrichment may offer experiential benefits while also being associated with greater cognitive demands. Drawing on Cognitive Load Theory and an intertemporal perspective, this study develops a cognitive–intertemporal framework linking perceived digital complexity, perceived spatial narrative richness, cognitive load, temporal discounting tendency, and sustainable decision-making intention. Using Digital Dunhuang as the empirical context, a cross-sectional survey of 603 users recruited through non-probability social media sampling was analyzed using structural equation modeling and bias-corrected bootstrapping. The results showed that perceived digital complexity and perceived spatial narrative richness were positively associated with cognitive load, which was positively associated with temporal discounting tendency, while temporal discounting tendency was negatively associated with sustainable decision-making intention. Although cognitive load was negatively associated with sustainable decision-making intention in the hypothesized model, this direct association became nonsignificant in the better-fitting extended partial-mediation model. The sequential indirect associations remained significant. Significant sequential indirect associations with sustainable decision-making intention were observed for both perceived digital complexity through cognitive load and temporal discounting tendency and perceived spatial narrative richness through cognitive load and temporal discounting tendency. Digital literacy attenuated the associations of perceived digital complexity and perceived spatial narrative richness with cognitive load, whereas future self-continuity attenuated the association between cognitive load and temporal discounting tendency but not that between cognitive load and sustainable decision-making intention. These findings identify a theoretically coherent cognitive–intertemporal pattern linking perceived digital heritage characteristics with sustainability-oriented intention, extending digital heritage research while underscoring the need for longitudinal or experimental evidence to establish temporal and causal ordering.