Determinants of Positive Word of Mouth for a Contemporary Art Exhibition on Web-based Virtual Reality

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

We aimsto examine the determinants of visitors' positive word-of-mouth (WOM) in a web-based virtual reality contemporary art exhibition. We also examines the effects of 3 realms of experience (entertainment, esthetic, escapist) on emotional arousal, how this emotional arousal affects memory and positive word-of-mouth, how memory affects positive word-of-mouth and how age moderate all of the paths. We examined a total of 297 visitors and was conducted through an online survey focusing on Chinese users of ages 20-49. The analysis results showed that entertainment and esthetic have an effect on emotional arousal, but escapist did not. The results also showed emotional arousal has an effect on memory and positive WOM. Memory did not affect positive word-of-mouth. Finally, age has a moderate effect on all the paths, except for the path form escape towards emotional arousal and memory to positive word-of-mouth. The theoretical implications of this study are meaningful exhibition research. While, it also will be helpful to segment the web-based virtual reality art exhibition visitors by dividing into 3 groups (20s, 30s, 40s) and to provide marketing and operation strategies.