Museum visitors’ acceptance of digital services in China and Russia: Extending UTAUT2 with individual-level cultural values

Museum digital services have become an important means of supporting visitors' access to information, understanding of exhibition content, and broader museum experiences. However, the mechanisms underlying visitors' acceptance of these services may vary across visitor groups. Drawing on a context-adapted Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model (UTAUT2), this study incorporates three individual-level cultural values-collectivism orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation-to examine acceptance intention toward museum digital services in China and Russia. The model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with survey data from China (n = 316) and Russia (n = 307). Measurement invariance of composites (MICOM) and PLS multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) were conducted to assess between-sample differences. Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and hedonic motivation all had significant positive effects on acceptance intention in both samples. The PLS-MGA results showed no significant between-sample differences in the effects of performance expectancy or social influence. Hedonic motivation had a significantly stronger effect in the Chinese sample, whereas effort expectancy and facilitating conditions had stronger effects in the Russian sample. The latter two differences should nevertheless be interpreted cautiously because compositional invariance was not established for these constructs. Collectivism strengthened the effect of social influence, uncertainty avoidance strengthened the effects of effort expectancy and facilitating conditions, and long-term orientation strengthened the effects of performance expectancy and hedonic motivation. None of the five moderating effects differed significantly between the two samples. These findings show that acceptance intention toward museum digital services is jointly shaped by functional benefits, ease of use, social cues, available support, experiential value, and visitors' individual cultural value orientations. The study provides evidence of both shared acceptance mechanisms and sample-specific path differences and offers a basis for visitor segmentation and the refinement of museum digital services.