Abstract

Museums aim to continuously entice visitors’ participation through various actions such as brand power, exhibition planning, and event design, and there is a lack of research on factors that affect brand power’s influence on active visitor engagement. Based on the cognitive-affective-conative (CAC) model, a study was conducted using the brand relationship theory and flow theory to explore the effects of the cognitive component of brand power on the conative component of active visitor engagement through the affective components of playfulness and brand resonance. A total of 1,280 questionnaires from Gen Y university students who visited museums across Taiwan were collected. After removing invalid questionnaires, 1,168 effective questionnaires remained with an effective return rate of 91.25 percent. The results found that knowledge, differentiation, relevance, and esteem of brand power have a significant positive effect on playfulness; knowledge, differentiation, and relevance of brand power have a significantly positive effect on brand resonance; and playfulness has a significant positive effect on brand resonance and active visitor engagement. Playfulness is the partial mediating effect of brand power’s knowledge on active visitor engagement. Furthermore, knowledge, differentiation, relevance, and esteem of brand power can affect active visitor engagement through the dual mediating effect of playfulness and brand resonance. Finally, based on the research results, the theoretical and practical implications, as well as future research direction and research limitations, are proposed.