Seppo Suominen Essays on cultural economics
Essay 3: Spectators of performing arts – who is sitting in the auditorium?
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1.3Essay 3: Spectators of performing arts – who is sitting in the auditorium?The third essay examines the performing arts audiences using a bivariate probit and multivariate logit analysis. The ISSP 2007 survey was carried out between 18th September and 11th December 2007 through a mail questionnaire in Finland. In Finland the ISSP surveys are carried out together by three institutions: Finnish Social Science Data Archive, The Department of Social Research at the University of Tampere and the Interview and Survey Services of Statistics Finland. According to the statistics, around 5 per cent of the Finns go to see performing arts (art exhibition, opera or theatrical performances) diligently and roughly 80 per cent occasionally (ISSP 2007). Audience and participation surveys argue that participation is segmented. Highbrow consumption is related to gender, age and formal education. Women are more active in highbrow art consumption, while men favour sports. The purpose of the fourth essay is to analyse differences in the visitor density in more detail. Can differences be observed between the regions when, for example, the effect of the educational background is taken into account? A bivariate probit model is useful because it estimates simultaneously two equations in cultural participation decisions. The method also allows to study whether there is significant correlation between the equations’ random disturbances. With this method, the principal characteristics of the performing arts and the sport events audiences can be identified. Using Finnish data a study like this has not been conducted earlier.
The results of the MNL show that the ones that “often” go to performing art performances or exhibitions have graduated from the upper secondary school or have a bachelor’s degree (university of applied sciences or university) or have a master’s degree. Middle-aged people (age between 45 and 54 or between 55 and 64) go most diligently. Gender is important: women are more active than men. College level education and somewhat younger age (age between 35 and 44) are significant to classify “less often” group from other visitor density groups. Regional differences are significant. The citizens of the province of Uusimaa or the region of Eastern Finland are the most active. A conclusion from the MNL models is that a crucial feature to classify into not attending and attending groups is at least upper secondary school. Furthermore, the separating feature between less often and often groups is at least a bachelor’s degree and 45 year age. Women on average are more active in highbrow art consumption. Furthermore, the essay studies what the roles of gender and other socio-economic variables are in sport events’ attendance. The results of the MNL and the probit model are similar. The visitor density of sport events attendance is also investigated using a MNL or probit model. Following the participating arts model, the sports events model has three groups: “often”, “less often” and “never”. Gender separates, but men are significantly more active than women. This result is in line with the participation motive models (Wann 1995) and with the statistics of the most popular sport events. Ice hockey and football are the most popular sports in terms of attendance and both could be classified as aggressive. A low education level (elementary school, edu2 or comprehensive school, edu3) is typical for those that are the most active and age less than 45. The results are mainly contrary to the performing arts participation results. However, the performing arts visitor density is added as an explanatory variable; it has a positive coefficient meaning that these two cultural segments have a common feature. Those that are active in highbrow art consumption are also active in sport event consumption. This is especially true for those that are “less often” goers. High education seems to be the common feature. There are no regional differences in sport consumption. The findings are consistent with the time-use survey evidence that highly-educated perform more activities and these include the consumption of cultural capital (Ruuskanen 2004). Since there is a common factor in both participating arts (art exhibition, opera and theatrical performances) and sport events consumption, the bivariate profit model must be used to study the participation equations simultaneously. The fundamental difference between the multinomial logit nad probit models and bivariate probit models is to assume that the error terms of the two explanatory models are correlated. One model is estimated for highbrow (ballet, dance performance, opera) and the other for sports (lowbrow). The multinomial logit model estimates only one equation to explain cultural consumption, but it allows more than two categories (‘often’, ‘less often’ and ‘never’), while the bivariate probit model assumes that there is a binary variable to be explained. If the disturbances of the bivariate equations are correlated, both the direct marginal effects and the indirect marginal effects can be evaluated. The general specification for a two-equation model assuming the binary choice is (Greene 2008, 817): 
The marginal effects of each explanatory variable are more reasonable since both the direct marginal effect and the indirect marginal effect can be estimated. Since education for example has an effect on both cultural segments (arts and sports), the indirect effect reveals whether these cultural segments are substitutes or complements. If the direct marginal effect of (say) master’s degree education (edu9) is positive for arts and indirect marginal effect is negative, the arts and sports consumption are substitutes for this socio-economic group. The results of the bivariate probit model confirm the effects of gender, education and age. Women are active in highbrow consumption and men in sport events consumption. Direct marginal effects of the education are significant if the education level is equal to or higher than upper secondary (college, a bachelor’s or master’s degree). The threshold age is 35. People older than 35 prefer arts and they diminish sport events consumption. The indirect marginal effects of education levels 6, 7 and 9 (a college diploma, and a bachelor’s degree from a university of applied sciences or a master’s degree) reveal that these citizens consider arts and sport events as substitutes. The correlation coefficient ρ of the error terms of the equations is 0.382 showing that the audiences of arts and sports have a common feature. Download 2.66 Mb. Share with your friends:
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