Impact of generativity on museum visitors' engagement,experience, and psychological well-being

The increasing importance of museums has attracted scholars and industry practitioners to focus more on museum tourists. Visiting museums has become a means to meeting the generative needs of tourists. Therefore, this study investigated generativity, defined as guidance and care for the development of the next generation through self-expanding forms, and its impact on engagement, experience, and psychological well-being. Seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with tourists at the Macau regional art museums to verify and enrich the generativity measurement scale of museum tourists. Subsequently, structural equation modeling was performed on questionnaire data of 416 art museum tourists in Macau. The results revealed that generativity directly affects engagement, experience, and psychological well-being. Moreover, engagement directly affects experience and psychological well-being, and experience directly affects psychological well-being. Additionally, engagement and experience are mediating variables between generativity and psychological well-being. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are provided accordingly.