The visitors' perception of authenticity at the museums: archaeology versus modern art

Juan Brida, Marta Disegna and Raffaele Scuderi

Current Issues in Tourism, 2014, vol. 17, issue 6, 518-538

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse quantitatively the visitors' perception of authenticity in two different types of museums: archaeology versus modern and contemporary art. The research is based on 1288 questionnaires collected from June to September 2011 among the visitors of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology (ÖTZI) in Bolzano and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MART) in Trento-Rovereto. Logit models were used in order to estimate the set of independent variables that significantly influence both the perception of the authenticity and the ‘virtual’ choice between the two types of museums considered. The results suggested that the authenticity perception was related to peculiar authenticity-related factors and by specific socio-demographic characteristics of the interviewee, although some common elements emerge. In particular, ÖTZI authenticity is linked to its uniqueness in the world, whereas MART visitors relate authenticity to the museum's building and the perception that it was not just a tourist attraction. The empirical evidence confirms the well-known concept that authenticity perception is a dynamic experience, depending on the peculiar characteristics of the attraction analysed.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13683500.2012.742042 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rcitxx:v:17:y:2014:i:6:p:518-538

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rcit20

DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2012.742042

Access Statistics for this article

Current Issues in Tourism is currently edited by Jennifer Tunstall

More articles in Current Issues in Tourism from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().