Is it really about historical interest? Configurational pathways to museum "check-in" intention among Chinese young adults.

As digital media become embedded in everyday life, museum "check-in" has become an increasingly visible form of cultural participation among Chinese young adults. This practice foregrounds social self-presentation, raising questions about whether engagement with historical and cultural contexts coexists with visually oriented and potentially superficial consumption. Guided by the theory of planned behavior, this study examined the configurations associated with museum "check-in" intention among Chinese young adults. Grounded theory-informed coding and constant comparison were first used to identify empirical categories, followed by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The analysis identified four configurational pathways: multiconditional synergy, convenience-enabled, contextual convergence, and positive appraisal. High intention did not depend uniformly on stable historical and cultural identification. Instead, several pathways involved different combinations of platform-mediated visibility, peer-based normative pressure, and low practical barriers. Psychological judgments were therefore closely intertwined with external contexts, while the pathway centered on cultural interest and experiential appraisal showed relatively limited empirical coverage. These findings provide a configurational account of digitally mediated cultural participation and clarify how evaluative, normative, informational, and practical conditions jointly shape museum "check-in" intention. More broadly, they suggest that youth museum participation cannot be reduced either to renewed cultural identification or to media-driven conformity.