Digital Cultural Heritage Platforms and Offline Cultural Participation Intention: An Integrative Review of User Experience, Technology Acceptance, and Cultural Identity

Teng Wang; Zijin  Li; Shaowen  Wang

Authors

Teng Wang International Chinese College, Panyapiwat Institute of Management, Thailand
Zijin Li International Chinese College, Panyapiwat Institute of Management, Thailand
Shaowen Wang International Chinese College, Panyapiwat Institute of Management, Thailand

Keywords:

Digital cultural heritage platforms, Offline cultural participation intention, User experience, Technology acceptance, Cultural identity

Abstract

Digital cultural heritage platforms have expanded public access to heritage resources and experiences, yet the translation of online engagement into offline visits, participation in cultural activities, and heritage-related consumption remains theoretically fragmented. Using an integrative review process, this study searched Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, Google Scholar, and CNKI, applied staged screening and thematic synthesis, and retained 38 publications in the final corpus. This integrative review synthesizes interdisciplinary evidence on how digital cultural heritage platforms shape users’ offline cultural participation intention. Conceptually, the review treats heritage platforms as platformized public-service environments that organize heritage resources through curation, interpretation, and interactive experience, and it positions offline cultural participation intention as a proximal outcome connecting online experience to offline behavior. Theoretically, the review adopts a stimulus–organism–response scaffold to align platform features, user psychological processing, and intention outcomes, while specifying two complementary organism-level mechanisms: cognitive evaluation grounded in technology acceptance, and meaning-making grounded in cultural identity. The synthesis indicates that platform-level stimuli converge on three actionable experience dimensions: interaction quality, aesthetic quality, and digital narrative. User responses are organized into two parallel pathways, one centered on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, and the other centered on cultural identity as a translation mechanism that connects digital experience to offline action tendencies. Offline cultural participation intention is commonly structured into intentions for on-site visits, offline cultural activities, and cultural consumption. The review also highlights benefit–risk trade-offs as a boundary condition that shapes conversion strength in hybrid and AI-mediated heritage contexts. Based on these findings, an integrated analytical framework is proposed—platform experience features - user psychological responses - offline cultural participation intention—to support cumulative research, cross-platform comparison, and design strategies that embed actionability into digital heritage experiences.

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