As sustainable tourism practices gain traction globally, immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have emerged as effective tools to enrich visitor experiences while supporting heritage site preservation. Particularly within built cultural environments, these technologies facilitate non-invasive interpretation of architectural spaces, enabling sustainable interaction with fragile historical structures. Despite growing scholarly attention, existing research has primarily focused on the pre-adoption phase or the technical affordances of AR/VR, with limited understanding of user behavior in the post-adoption phase. To address this gap, this study integrates the Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) with the experiential attributes of AR/VR-enabled heritage applications, proposing an integrated theoretical model to identify key determinants of tourists’ continuance intention. Based on 434 valid survey responses collected at the Terracotta Warriors Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM), the results reveal that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, satisfaction, and confirmation directly influence continuance intention, while visual appeal, entertainment, enjoyment, interactivity and confirmation exert indirect effects through mediating mechanisms. The findings contribute theoretically by extending ECM to the heritage tourism domain and empirically by providing robust evidence from a high-profile non-Western site. Practically, this study offers actionable implications for designing immersive experiences that enhance post-visit continuance intention and align with broader sustainability objectives.

As sustainable tourism gains global momentum, extended reality (XR) technologies have emerged as important tools for enhancing visitor experiences at overburdened World Heritage Sites while mitigating physical deterioration through non-consumptive engagement. However, existing research on immersive technologies in heritage tourism has largely relied on single-cultural samples and has paid limited attention to theoretically grounded boundary conditions in post-adoption behaviour. To address these gaps, this study extends the Expectation–Confirmation Model (ECM) by incorporating cultural distance (CD) and prior visitation experience (PVE) as moderating variables, and empirically tests the proposed framework using a mixed domestic–international sample exposed to an on-site XR application at the Badaling Great Wall World Heritage Site. Data were collected immediately after the XR experience and analysed using structural equation modelling. The results validate the core relationships of ECM while identifying significant moderating effects. Cultural distance attenuates the positive effects of confirmation on perceived usefulness as well as the effect of perceived usefulness on continuance intention, while prior visitation experience weakens the influences of enjoyment and visual appeal on satisfaction. These findings establish important boundary conditions for ECM in immersive heritage contexts. From a practical perspective, the study demonstrates that high-quality, culturally responsive XR can complement physical visitation and support sustainable conservation strategies at large-scale linear heritage sites.

Digitalization and intelligent interaction technologies are transforming museum services, making interactive interfaces important for cultural information access and user experience. Existing studies often examine aesthetics, usability, visual cognition, or emotional experience separately. To address this gap, this study proposes a multi-criteria evaluation method for interactive interface layouts in smart digital museums. The evaluation system includes nine indicators across layout aesthetics, visual cognition, and emotional experience: symmetry, density score, orderliness, total fixation duration, average pupil diameter, saccade count, pleasure, arousal, and dominance. Six layouts were evaluated using layout aesthetics calculations, an eye-tracking experiment with 32 participants, and the Pleasure–Arousal–Dominance (PAD) scale. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the eye-tracking and PAD data. RANCOM and LOPCOW were used to calculate the subjective and objective weights, respectively, and TOPSIS was used to rank the layouts. Ranking robustness was examined through 54 weight-perturbation scenarios, while ranking agreement was assessed using Spearman’s and Kendall’s coefficients and four alternative multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) procedures. L1 ranked first with a relative closeness of 0.876, followed by L5 and L6, while L4 ranked last with 0.120. The baseline ranking was retained in 51 of the 54 scenarios, with a consistency rate of 94.44%. Spearman’s coefficients ranged from 0.943 to 1.000, and Kendall’s coefficients ranged from 0.867 to 1.000. These results indicate relative ranking robustness under the tested scenarios and high agreement within the current dataset. Layouts with balanced spatial relationships, continuous functional modules, and clear visual paths showed more favorable descriptive patterns in visual cognition and emotional experience. The method provides a quantifiable and interpretable approach for comparing smart digital museum interface layouts, while its broader applicability remains to be examined.

Archaeological sites are fragile, non-renewable heritage environments where visitors’ inappropriate behavior may cause irreversible damage. This study designed and evaluated a VR serious game, Guarding the Terracotta Warriors, to promote visitors’ responsible visiting behavior intention at archaeological sites. Examining the Terracotta Warriors Museum as a case study, this study identified conservation needs through literature and case analysis, expert interviews, and preliminary visitor interviews, and translated them into four design requirements: path guidance for visiting boundaries, reflection on visiting order, contextualized risk decisions, and concrete feedback on behavioral consequences. Based on the MDA framework, these requirements were further transformed into interactive game mechanisms. A within-subject experiment with 46 participants compared the VR serious game with conservation-content-matched video instruction, followed by semi-structured interviews with 20 participants. Quantitative results showed that the VR serious game produced significantly higher scores than video instruction in presence, experience satisfaction, conservation-related attitude, awareness of consequences, personal norms, and responsible visiting behavior intention. Task load was slightly higher in the VR condition, but its mean score remained below the midpoint of the seven-point scale, indicating a relatively modest level of perceived task load. Qualitative findings further indicated that embodied exploration, safe-to-fail risk decisions, visitor-order feedback, and irreversible restoration feedback helped participants understand conservation boundaries and behavioral consequences. This study provides a design framework and empirical evidence for using VR serious games to support responsible visitor education at archaeological sites.