Exploring the effects of AR presence and personal norms on museum visitor pro-environmental behaviour intentions

While most research on virtual reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology in museum tourism have focus on visitors' experience and stakeholders' views on AR projects, the relationship between VR/AR technology, personal norms and behaviour intentions of museum visitors has been overlooked. This study integrates the Norm Activation Theory (NAT) and the stimulus organism response (SOR) paradigm, and mainly studied that the impact of AR technology on personal norms and the pro-environmental behaviour intentions of museum visitors. Taking the AR project of the Marine Animal Branch in the Guangdong Museum as an example, this study collected 401 valid questionnaires and used confirmatory factor analysis for validity testing and structural equation analysis for hypothesis testing. This study found that the awareness of consequence of museum visitors positively affects personal norms through ascribed responsibility, and personal norms positively affect pro-environmental behavioural intentions. Personal norms are a direct factor affecting the museum visitors' pro-environmental behavioural intentions. The study also discovered that attitudes positively affect museum visitors' pro-environmental behavioural intentions. This study extends normative activation theory, and proposes a new theoretical model. Moreover, this study further confirms the causal chain of awareness of consequences-ascribed responsibility-personal norms-behaviour intention and proposes that awareness of consequence can influence attitudes and, thus, pro-environmental behavioural intentions. These additions it expected to enhance the predictive validity and explanatory power of Norm Activation Theory related to tourists' pro-environmental behavior. The conclusions of this study provide practical suggestions for the application of new technologies in the management of museums and other similar scenic spots.