•Participants stayed longer with slow-tempo music than with fast-tempo music.•Music tempo exerted the greatest impact on participants’ duration of stay.•When visitor density reaches a crowded level, the tempo of music influences the duration of stay. Investigations have been made into the effect of music tempo on the duration of stay in commercial spaces, but not in exhibition spaces. Previous research has frequently used the duration of stay as an indicator of exhibition learning. To understand how music tempo may influence this learning, this study investigated the effect of music tempo on the duration of stay in exhibition spaces. Because the density of visitors, exhibit elements, or music or exhibit element preferences may affect the duration of stay in exhibition spaces, further investigation was conducted to determine which factors had an impact on the duration of stay in exhibition spaces and which factors had the greatest impact. An online experiment was conducted with a virtual representation of the famous White Cube Gallery in London. To investigate the influence of three factors on the duration of stay in exhibition spaces, 36 scenarios were generated for objective evaluation: music tempo (fast, medium, slow, none), exhibit element density (high, medium, low), and visitor density (single, crowded, uncrowded). Then subjective evaluation was used to investigate whether music preference or exhibit element preference influenced the duration of stay during the above 36 scenarios. Additionally, through subjectively and objectively exploring all the factors affecting participants’ duration of stay (music tempo, exhibit element density, visitor density, music preference, exhibit element preference), this study sought to determine which factors exerted the greatest impact. The objective results revealed that participants stayed longer (by approximately 30 s) with slow-tempo music than with fast-tempo music. Moreover, when the influence of music tempo (fast, medium, slow, none), exhibit element density (high, medium, low), and visitor density (single, crowded, uncrowded) were considered, the results showed that when the visitor density reaches crowded conditions, fast- or slow-tempo music will exert an impact on the duration of stay. The subjective results revealed that, when the effect of exhibit element density or visitor density were considered alongside the effect of music tempo on participants’ duration of stay, exhibit element preferences will also exert an impact on the duration of stay. The subjective and objective results revealed that of all the factors that influence participants’ duration of stay, music tempo (fast or slow) exerted the greatest impact.