Digital Heritage and Place-Based History Education: Effects of Augmented Reality and 360° Virtual Tours on Middle School Students’ Place Attachment and Social Responsibility

Cultural heritage sustainability depends not only on the physical conservation of heritage assets but also on whether younger generations form meaningful relationships with heritage places and civic dispositions to help protect them. This study examined a digitally supported, place-based history intervention integrating augmented reality (AR), 360° virtual tours, field-based historical inquiry, collaborative interpretation, and digital reflection. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest control-group mixed-methods design was implemented with 64 seventh-grade students (32 experimental, 32 control) in two intact classes at one public middle school in İstanbul, Türkiye, over four weeks centred on the Sultanahmet Historic Peninsula; both groups covered the same curriculum unit with the same teacher for the same instructional time. Two researcher-developed instruments measured place attachment and general social responsibility; data were analysed via an analysis of covariance with the pretest as a covariate, Pearson correlation, and a thematic analysis of interviews and reflection journals. After pretest adjustment, the experimental group scored higher on place attachment, F(1, 61) = 87.34, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.589, and on social responsibility, F(1, 61) = 93.12, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.604, and the two outcomes covaried within that group, r = 0.74, p < 0.001. Because the sample was small and single-school, allocation was not randomised, and the field visit and novelty are plausible contributors, these magnitudes are reported as exploratory upper bounds. Three qualitative themes indicate how students accounted for the change: digital tools made historical layers comparable, the site acquired personal and intergenerational meaning, and conservation responsibility became explicit. Heritage stewardship is reported as an interpretive construct evidenced qualitatively, not as a measured outcome. The educational contribution of immersive heritage technologies appears to depend on their embedding in situated historical inquiry and reflection.