Perceived Museum Accessibility as a Sequential Urban Experience: A Resident–Tourist Framework Across China’s Metropolitan Areas

This study reconsiders museum accessibility not simply as a matter of distance or locational reach, but as a sequential and experience-based urban condition shaped across three stages of museum visiting: pre-trip feasibility, in-transit experience, and post-arrival usability. Using survey data from residents and tourists across China’s metropolitan areas, the study develops a user-centred framework that differentiates time feasibility, journey comfort and predictability, and arrival/visit usability. Rather than claiming museum-level or city-level causal effects, the analysis identifies how respondents’ overall evaluations of these accessibility dimensions are structured by detailed item-level conditions and by differences in familiarity with the urban environment. The resident–tourist comparison shows that accessibility is interpreted differently under habitual and unfamiliar mobility contexts. The contribution of the study lies in providing a framework-building account of museum accessibility as a spatially mediated and socially experienced urban process, while also clarifying the limits of the current dataset and the need for future integration with geocoded museum, transport, and urban-form data.