Revitalizing Rural Heritage Through an Intergenerational Alternate Reality Game: A Mixed-Methods Study in Taiwan

Taiwan’s rural regions face aging populations, digital divides, and fragmented heritage narratives that limit sustainable cultural revitalization. This study investigates how a community-based Alternate Reality Game (ARG) can integrate dispersed cultural assets in Shiding District into a coherent, immersive experience that supports intergenerational learning and community engagement. Drawing on ARG/transmedia narrative theory, scaffolding theory, intergenerational learning, and value co-creation, the research adopts an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design: qualitative interviews and co-design workshops inform ARG system development, followed by field implementation and pre–post evaluation with 78 participants across three age groups. The results show large improvements in user experience and immersion, while quantitative changes in cultural understanding, perceived learning support, and community engagement are modest and not consistently positive, despite rich qualitative accounts of heightened awareness of local history and community life. Participants’ narratives highlight a reciprocal scaffolding dynamic, in which younger visitors provide digital assistance and older residents contribute local knowledge, as well as strong perceptions of co-creation with community hosts. These findings suggest that a low-cost, participatory ARG can effectively reduce on-site narrative fragmentation and foster emotionally engaging, intergenerational experiences, but that deeper and more durable cultural learning effects likely require refined measurement and longer-term engagement. The study contributes an integrated design and evaluation framework for rural ARG applications and offers practical guidelines for communities and policymakers seeking inclusive, story-driven models of digital heritage revitalization.