Brazilian visitors’ motivation to a museum: psychometric properties of an instrument through combination of methods

The visit to a science museum may be manifested through complex and dynamic motivations which, according to the literature, are under-investigated in a Brazilian context. In this study, an instrument has been modified and applied to 202 visitors up to 15 years in order to investigate motivation for visiting. Combined application of Exploratory Factor Analysis and the Information Bottleneck method revealed that 17 out of the 20 initial items in the questionnaire aligned with three dimensions of motivation. The main motivation was learning desire, while entertainment and interaction motivations were significantly less important. The study provided relevant evidence regarding the motivations of visitors that will be valuable in improving the activities of the museum. The implications of our findings for future research are discussed.