Tourism flows and the demand for regional and city theatres in Austria

This paper investigates the impact of tourism flows on demand for large regional and city theatres in Austria over the period from 1972 to 2011 (39 years). The results are obtained by applying an aggregated theatre demand function for both residents and tourists. The elasticity of theatre attendance in response to tourism is estimated along with other standard demand variables such as ticket price and income. The quality factors and theatre-specific effects are also included. The tourism flows variables are derived using detailed data set on tourist arrivals and their overnight counts, and they are also split between domestic and foreign tourists. To measure the impact of tourism flows on theatre demand, three alternative theatre markets specifications are considered. The total elasticity of attendance per capita in response to tourism is estimated between 15 and 20 %, indicating that increasing the number of arrivals by two tourists per resident in the relevant market would generate an increase in theatre attendance by 581–680 thousand visitors per year. The role of tourism flows is found to be particularly important for attendance at opera, operetta and musicals as opposed to attendance at drama performances. The analysis also reveals that foreign, non-German tourists have a positive impact on theatre attendance, whereas domestic tourists do not contribute significantly to higher demand for Austrian theatres.     

Cinema Demand In Germany

This paper examines the German cinema market using time series data covering the period 1950–2002. Applying estimation techniques such as OLS, 2SLS and SUR, we identify interrelations between the number of seats, the average real prices and the demand for movies per capita. Furthermore, we test for the long-run relationship between demand, prices and real income and estimate the elasticity of demand with respect to these variables.JEL–Classification: C22, C23, L82     

Empirical Evidence of a Decline in Repertory Diversity among American Opera Companies 1991/92 to 1997/98

Using data published by Opera America, this paperexamines the aggregate repertory of U.S.companies by calculating the total numberof companies and productions at six dates; thenumber of 20th century operas produced; theDiMaggio–Stenberg Index of conformity; andthe Herfindahl index of concentration. It is shownthat opera is a growth industry, butchanges in the character of repertory over timesuggest that since the early 1990s U.S.companies have been shifting their programming towarda more popular, less demandingrepertory. Presumably, this is done to ward offfinancial pressure.     

The importance of quality: How music festivals achieved commercial success

This paper examines the characteristics that are important to current commercially viable massive music festivals when making decisions on who to hire while facing horizontal and vertical quality differentiation with heterogeneous preferences among intended consumers. A model of customer demand motivates the empirical analysis using a unique bundling problem in which the consumer faces an unknown element, depending on festival reputation for expected utility. The empirical analysis utilizes characteristics important to the negotiation between the festival and the band as input. Musical acts with an album recognized as being of a high quality are about 33 % more likely to be hired by a festival in the year of release and 50 % more likely the following year. A top touring band is 40 % more likely to be hired in the first year, but 45 % less likely to be hired in the following year, likely due to an increased cost of hiring. Festivals hire quality, unknown bands to take advantage of the lower costs of lesser known acts by leveraging a reputation for evaluating quality before the consumer. Other industries face similar input decisions, giving the results a broader application.     

A microeconometric study of theatre demand

We develop a model of theatre demand with learning by consuming, and test some of its implications on a large random sample of theatregoers and non-theatregoers. This seems to be the most comprehensive econometric study of demand for the theatre from individual data. We hypothesize that each time the consumer watches a play, he experiences a degree of pleasant or unpleasant surprise on the basis of which he will revise his future expectations of his own taste. The learning phase is likely to be unusually long for highly differentiated cultural goods. Our set of data contains unique information about the full price and the fixed cost of theatre, the objective quality of the outing, past experience of and taste for the theatre, and consumption of substitute leisure activities such as reading, television and cinema. Our methodology and data enable us to infer price elasticity on survey data from knowledge of theatregoing experience and taste. After controlling for many variables, we conclude that demand for the theatre is price-elastic, which contradicts previous estimates on aggregate time-series data. Moreover, we estimate demand conditional on past attendance after controlling for selectivity bias. Satisfaction reported by consumers after the last play is also estimated and interpreted as an ordinal conditional choice.     

The influence of book advertising on sales in the German fiction book market

Driven by the pressure to permanently release a large number of books, publishers have to allocate limited advertising budgets across the wide range of newly released books. As in many creative industries, publishers often focus their advertising activities on potential top sellers written by recent bestselling authors. Considering potential selection effects in choosing the “right” books for advertising, this paper investigates (1) whether selection effects exist and to what extent potential selection effects influence the relation between book advertising and book sales and (2) the boundary conditions under which book advertising leads to higher sales by focusing on the “star power” effects of authors. By applying propensity score matching to a dataset of 598 fiction books from the German book market, we identify substantial selection effects that lead to a serious overestimation of advertising effectiveness by up to 41 % (10,000 copies sold). Using group analyses, we find that sales of books written by recent bestselling authors are not significantly influenced by advertising activities of publishers; however, the sales of books written by lesser-known authors can be increased significantly if they are advertised. Our findings are highly relevant for publishers, indicating that a shift in the allocation of advertising budgets toward promising books by lesser-known authors is recommended to improve the overall advertising effectiveness.     

The demand for vinyl L.P.s. 1975–1988

The paper estimates the demand for vinyl L.P.s in the U.K. In so doing, it outlines a technique to account for the impact of product differentiation innovation when estimating the demand for a product group. This may be particularly important for cultural goods where consumers are attracted to buy a product because of its unique characteristics and where these characteristics differ across time. Thus, the methodology may be used to estimate the demand for other product groups, such as movies and literature. Over the sample period L.P.s are found to be normal goods which are close to being unit price elastic. The diffusion of the Compact Disc appears to reduce the price elasticity of vinyl L.P.s. Consumers also appear to treat L.P.s as perishable goods and the demand for vinyl albums is positively stimulated both by the range of albums available on the L.P. format and product differentiation innovation.     

守护浙江戏剧文化瑰宝的明天

"一部戏剧史,半部在浙江。"目前,浙江省有56个剧种列入省级"非遗",24个剧种列入国家级"非遗",因而被称为"戏剧大省"。但据浙江省政协文卫体委员会和浙江省戏剧发展促进会调研,只有14个剧种可以登台表演,有11个剧种已经进入濒危状态。如在千岛湖畔的淳安县,古属睦州,睦剧全盛时有90多个剧团,300多名艺人。而现在县里只有一个睦剧团,戏称"天下第一团"。为此,浙江省文化厅专门制订     

Full-income and price elasticities of demand for German public theatre

This article provides estimates of price and income elasticities of demand for German public theatre, using a large and reliable data set for 178 theatres over 40 years (1965–2004). It is posited that the consumption of the performing arts is a time-intensive activity for which both a theatre ticket and leisure time are necessary. Thus, the impacts of ‘full-income’ (‘leisure time income’ added to disposable income) and the price of leisure time on theatre attendance are examined. The findings indicate that the demand for the performing arts is own-price inelastic. The disposable income elasticity is significant, positive and equals approximately one. In contrast, the full-income elasticity is well above one and greater than usual income elasticity indicating that the performing arts are a luxury good when leisure time income is included in the consumer’s budget. The positive full-income effect is, however, offset by the negative price of leisure effect indicating that leisure time is a complement for the performing arts. Additionally, three objective quality characteristics of theatrical productions which can positively influence theatre demand are examined.

Lead–lag relationship between household cultural expenditures and business cycles

This paper empirically examines how household cultural expenditures correspond to business cycles in Japan. Since income level is among the most important determinants of cultural demand, and income fluctuates with business cycles, examining the relationship between cultural expenditures and business cycles is useful, particularly in discussing income elasticity of cultural demand. The data used are monthly household expenditures for movies, live performances, and cultural establishments in the Family Income and Expenditure Survey. Turning points for cultural expenditures and related indicators are determined by estimating the regime-switching model. The lead–lag relationship between these series and the reference dates of Japanese business cycles are analyzed. The result indicates that cultural expenditures fluctuate cyclically with unstable leads and lags corresponding to business cycles. In addition, cultural expenditures adhere to smaller specific cycles within officially designated expansions, which imply that income elasticity has not been constant during past business cycles.     

Local government allocation of cultural services

In the present paper, we analyse the allocation process for cultural services in Norwegian municipalities. The cultural sector at this administrative level is decomposed into the following eight subcategories: children’s and youth activities, libraries, cinemas, museums, arts dissemination, cultural heritage, cultural schools, and other cultural services. By means of budget shares for these eight cultural services and a residual sector consisting of all other municipal services, we estimate a system of demand relations which are interdependently linked to each other by a budget restriction. Our analyses are based on data from 409 out of 429 Norwegian municipalities during the period 2002–2010. In the empirical analyses, we mainly focus on the effects of income variation for the cultural services. We estimate effects of free income, matching grants to each sector, and user fees and other sector-specific income for each sector. We also estimate crowding-out effects for the cultural sectors of demographic variables indicating higher demand for services such as education, childcare, and health services. Our results confirm previous results. There are interesting differences within the group of cultural services, and these are partly related to different levels of national standardisation and regulation among the cultural services.     

The economics of music festivals

This paper attempts to explain the rapid growth in the number of classical music and opera festivals. Two secularly increasing demand factors — a rise in real disposable incomes and an increased amount of time and money devoted to holidays — are well met by the supply of music festivals which almost perfectly combine culture and holidays. On the supply side, festivals may profit from low marginal cost of production factors and are considered as an effort to avoid restrictions from government regulations and trade unions.     

Live and prerecorded popular music consumption

Changing consumption habits have rearranged the popular music market in the last decade, and a pattern in which live music attendance gets an increasing share of the market has emerged. This work analyzes the demand for the popular music sector considering its double dimension as supplier of live concerts and prerecorded music. We use the 2006/2007 wave of Spain’s Survey on Habits and Cultural Practices, and estimate a bivariate probit model for attendance to live concerts and the purchase of prerecorded music. Results allow us to describe the profile of the average and frequent consumer in both markets, which shows some similarities—gender effects and the role of cultural capital—but also striking differences—time restrictions and relation to economic activity, and the use of technology. Finally, we find evidence of demand complementarities, with a direct causal link from prerecorded music to live attendance that helps explain recent institutional changes.     

Cinema Demand in Spain: A Cointegration Analysis

In this paper we explain the decline in cinema attendance in Spain since 1968. We use a cointegration analysis to estimate an individual demand function for cinema, with annual data and in terms of average attendance per inhabitant. We find that cinema is a luxury good and that its demand is elastic with respect to its price. We also show that television acts as a deterrent with regard to cinema attendance. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

On the relationship between reserve prices and low estimates in art auctions

Using a unique hand-collected dataset comprising all auctions held by a major Italian auction house in Italy from 1994 to 1997 and including confidential information on reserve prices, we find empirical evidence in support of several studies in cultural economics literature that reserve prices are set in a range of approximately 75 % of low presale estimates.     

Demand for and productivity analysis of Turkish public theater

We estimate a demand function for live theater provided by the General Directorate of State Theaters in Turkey. We show that demand is more elastic in less developed cities, that attendance is not significantly affected by various qualitative variables, and that the government's practice of offering free passes to government officials is an ineffective way of increasing paid attendance. Comedies and musicals both show significantly higher attendance. Having a Turkish author does not significantly affect attendance. Having a known author significantly increases attendance for more developed cities but not for less developed cities. Being the opening season significantly reduces attendance in less developed cities but has no effect in more developed cities. We also present evidence of inefficiency in state theaters in Turkey through a performance of plays equation in which we evaluate the determinants of the number of performances per play.     

Do the arts make you happy? A quantile regression approach

Compared to other leisure time activities, the effect of arts attendance on happiness has received less attention and studies of related topics have produced mixed results, identifying either no effect or very small effects. We investigate this issue using a large (N = 7753) sample from the UK. In contrast to earlier studies, quantile regression is used to allow the relationship between arts attendance and other controls and happiness to vary across different levels of happiness. The relationship found in prior studies is confirmed, but the quantile regression results show that the nature of the relationship varies across the distribution of the happiness variable. A significant relationship is found at the lower quartile, and a moderate relationship (significant at the 10% level) is found at the median level.     

Demand for Live Theater with Market Segmentation and Seasonality

Using performance level box-office receipts from the PacificConservatory of the Performing Arts over eight years, we analyzeperformance-level demand for live theater. The disaggregated data allowsus to estimate demand at a particular venue and to characterize theseasonality of demand for live theater. We examine whether the supply ofshows matches the differentiated tastes of theater-goers at each of thethree locations and the sensitivity of demand to critical reviews andprior attendance.     

Are Popular and Classical Music Listeners the Same People?

In this paper we propose a method for analysing the differences between theconsumption of popular and classical music, that we apply to Spain. Using theinformation contained in the Survey of Structure, Conscience and Biography ofClass, we estimate a bivariate probit model to characterise the audience foreach kind of music, we quantify the influence exerted by various socioeconomicfeatures on the demand for these goods and we describe the average profile ofconsumers.     

Learning about movies: the impact of movie release types on the nationwide box office

Major Hollywood studios typically release new movies in North America in one of the two ways, wide release or platform release. In this paper, we investigate how release form affects the demand of a new movie after it is nationally released. In particular, we focus on movies for which the platform release is pre-planned to make the problem tractable. We estimate our model using a sample of Hollywood movies that eventually received nationwide release from 1999 to 2003. Our results show that platform release shifts consumers’ perception of unobservable movie appeal through its first stage performance, which turns out to be a stronger effect than that of advertising. Meanwhile, we find that the demand for platform movies decays faster than for wide release ones after their national release. Using counterfactual analysis, we find that more than half of the platform movies which later went to national release would have earned higher profits if they had been given a wide release.