ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what motivates people to use museums and engage with their content and practices. It highlights a number of gaps in theory and research around motivation, namely the narrow focus on what constitutes museum audiences which represent a small subset of the wider population. When examining the existing museum motivation research, the issue that becomes obvious is that only a limited amount of work has focused on motivation to engage during the actual visit. The chapter presents the wide range of qualities associated with serious leisure types of activities echoes the different motivations for engaging in the Volunteer Inclusion Programme (VIP) presented. It follows the amateur archaeologist's engagement with archaeological practice and how this activity becomes an identity-congruent behaviour in contextualising motivation. The chapter focuses more on visitor motivation as these are expressed before or after their actual visit, according to J. H. Falk and his colleagues.
