The Demand for Theatre. A Microeconomic Approach to the Italian Case

This paper examines theatre participation in Italy over the period 1995 2006. Explanatory variables are determined by identifying their contributions to both the individual's decision to attend, and the frequency of attendance. Socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics, cultural capital, participation in other cultural activities, ticket price and theatre supply are taken into account. Three different models are used: the logistic regression model, the ordered logistic regression model and the finite mixture model. In the first two cases the contribution of each variable is not so different, in the case of finite mixture model the significance of the variables is not the same in the two components. For instance, the variable education, a proxy for cultural capital, is always significant in determining participation, but not in frequency of participation. In general, our results show that participation is not specific to a particular theatrical event since people who attend one arts activity are more likely to attend others. Finally, our results show that traditional socio-economic variables such as income and education are highly correlated with participation in the arts.