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A discrete choice model of consumption of cultural goods: the case of music

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Abstract

In this article we present an empirical analysis of the ‘patterns of cultural choice’ in the musical domain in Italy. The main goal of the article is to verify whether musical tastes in Italy are diversified, with the presence of a group of ‘cultural omnivores’. Our study is based on the theoretical model of the demand for cultural goods proposed by Lévy-Garboua and Montmarquette (1996). In the empirical analysis we simultaneously evaluate the probability of choosing different musical genres. Through the specification of the set of alternatives into three groupings of musical genres —“only classical music”, “only popular music” and “all music”—we were able to detect the relative impact of several socio-economic characteristics on the probability of having “univorous” or “omnivorous” musical likings. In addition, our approach allows us to verify the existence of different patterns of music consumption by testing the significance of differences among the estimated coefficients of the probability functions related to the three groupings of musical genres. We find that age, gender and education are important predictors of an omnivorous taste.

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Notes

  1. This weakness is even more apparent—and, we could say, even more striking if we compare it with the situation in other countries—when the empirical estimates of the determinants of the demand are considered. The contributions to this issue have been relatively scarce, and have dealt with it either with time-series or cross-sectional analyses using regional data (Bonato et al. 1990; Brosio and Santagata 1992; Trimarchi 1994; Gorelli 1994; Taormina and Franzoni 1997; Fuortes 2001; Fuortes et al. 2002; Pasquali 2002), or on the basis of individual data collected through surveys undertaken on the initiative of single cultural institutions or of regional ‘cultural observatories’.

  2. Using the microdata of the 1994 ISTAT Survey on Italian Households, the author estimates five separate probability equations for different kinds of cultural activities (theatergoing, cinemagoing, visits to museums and exhibitions, classical music and opera concerts, pop music concerts).

  3. Two recently published works contain comprehensive surveys of the relevant literature in this regard. The first (Pettit 2000) is a detailed inventory of 29 datasets containing information on public participation in (and attitudes towards) the arts in the USA and Canada, where one can also find bibiographic references to the many scholarly works and publications based upon the surveyed datasets. The second (Mc Carthy et al. 2001) analyses the key empirical and theoretical contributions of the literature on participation in the arts. See also: Kracman 1996; Gray 1998; Bihagen and Katz-Gerro 2000; Prieto-Rodriguez and Fernandez-Blanco 2000; Van Eijck 2001; Coulangeon 2003; Fisher and Preece 2003; Borgonovi 2004; Prieto-Rodriguez et al. 2005.

  4. As far as the main research question is concerned, the contribution by Prieto-Rodríguez and Fernández-Blanco (PRFB 2000) does not deal directly with the existence and characteristics of a specific category of ‘omnivorous’ musical consumers: the principal aim of the authors is to explore the differences between the consumption of popular and classical music in the Spanish social context. As we shall see, however, their work can be interpreted as offering us, indirectly, some interesting suggestions also in relation to the ‘omnivorousness’ issue, which on the contrary is taken explicitly into consideration by the other three essays.

  5. Their correlation coefficient, at 0.489, being significantly different from zero.

  6. The survey was conducted in December 2000 with a two-stage stratified sampling scheme, and reached a total of 54,239 individuals in 19,996 families.

  7. While the survey also contains a question on the level of family income, this information appears neither in the ISTAT publications illustrating the aggregate results of the survey nor in the raw data files (where the relevant field in the individual records is empty). Needless to say, from our point of view this is a most unfortunate fact, given the presumably high relevance of individual/family incomes in influencing the choice of cultural (and non-cultural) goods and services. We try to control for that lack of information by using some proxy of the individual income level, such as the occupational condition and the type of occupation.

  8. More specifically, each individual over eleven years old is asked: (a) How frequently—daily; a few times a week; once a week; a few times a month; a few times a year; never—does s/he happen to listen to some music; (b) How frequently—often; sometimes; never—does s/he listen to specific musical genres, among a list of 14, with the possibility of multiple choices (classical music; opera; folk, regional, traditional; pop music; rock, punk; jazz, blues; disco, house; techno, rap; ethnic and world music; new age; heavy metal, dark; country; childrens’ music; latin music); (c) how many times approximately—never; 1–3; 4–6; 7–12; more than 12—did s/he go, in the preceding 12 months, to concerts of: (1) classical music; (2) opera; (3) rock or pop music; (4) jazz, blues; (5) folk, traditional music; (d) Whether and how often, in her/his leisure time, s/he plays an instrument, composes music or sings in a choir, and whether such activities are carried out in the context of courses organized by schools or associations.

  9. We model the choice of listening to music as a multiple-choice process similar to those analysed by McFadden (1974) with respect to the choice of the travel mode of urban commuters and by Schmidt and Strauss (1975) with respect to the occupational choice among multiple alternatives.

  10. In doing so we respect one of the fundamental characteristics that belong to a discrete choice model (Train 2002). As it is well known, the set of alternatives, that is the choice set open to a decision maker, needs to exhibit three characteristics. (1) First, the alternatives must be mutually exclusive from the decision maker’s perspective: choosing one alternative necessarily implies not choosing any of the other alternatives. (2) Second, the choice set must be exhaustive, in that all possible alternatives are included. (3) Third, the number of alternatives must be finite.

  11. For a definition of the categories ‘classical’ and ‘popular’, see Sect. 3.

  12. In fact some of the individuals listening to classical music could be even listeners to popular music (and vice versa).

  13. Peterson and Simkus (1992), Peterson and Kern (1996), Van Eijck (2001), Fisher and Preece (2003), Coulangeon (2003) and Prieto-Rodríguez and Fernández-Blanco (2000).

  14. As it will be explained in the Section on the results.

  15. The error term in the multinomial logit model is generally supposed to be identically and independently distributed with mean zero and variance σ ɛ. However, since our dataset is derived from a household survey and observations cannot necessarily be considered independent among individuals of the same family, we correct for this possibility by specifying the likely dependency of the errors within each household.

  16. We distinguish among occupied, non-occupied, housekeeper, retired, unable to work, military servant and other types of inactive.

  17. We control for the following occupational categories: blue-collar worker, white-collar, upper-level white-collar, manager, elementary-school teacher, secondary-school teacher, entrepreneur, professional, self-employed and family business collaborator (plus some other minor categories).

  18. North-West, North-East, Centre, South, Islands.

  19. The categories are: Central municipality of a metropolitan area; Suburb of a metropolitan area; municipality with not more than 10,000 inhabitants; municipality with more than 10,000 inhabitants.

  20. Both in the case of testing individual coefficients and the whole set of coefficients, we perform Wald tests.

  21. Fisher and Preece note that in Canada “the incidence of both snobs and omnivores is higher among those with college diplomas, some university experience, or a university degree.” (Fisher and Preece 2003, p. 77). In the Dutch case, van Eijck (2001) finds schooling levels to have strong positive effects for both what he calls the high brow factor and the “new omnivore” factor. According to Prieto-Rodrìguez and Fernàndez Blanco “the educational level has a positive effect on both types of music. The analysis of the coefficients of the corresponding variables reveals that this effect is higher in classical music”. (PRFB 2000, p. 157).

  22. See: Trostel–Walker–Woolley 2002; Psacharopoulos–Patrinos 2004. In the Italian case, Brunello and Miniaci (1999), studying the relationship between current earnings and educational attainment for Italian men, show that, in a cross-section setting, the marginal returns to additional educational levels are quite high: 4.2% and 7.2%, respectively, for an additional year of secondary school or college; moreover, when using longitudinal data it also emerges from their work that individuals of the same age with higher-education experience faster earnings growth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Padova, Via del Santo 33, Padova, 35123, Italy

    Donata Favaro & Carlofilippo Frateschi

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  1. Donata Favaro
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  2. Carlofilippo Frateschi
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Correspondence to Donata Favaro.

Appendix

Appendix

Table A.1 Concerts attendance. Summary statistics
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Table A.2 Listening to music. Summary statistics
Full size table
Table A.3 Tests on the hypothesis of equality of all coefficients (χ2-values)*
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Table A.4 Concerts attendance. Tests on the hypothesis of coefficient equality between probability functions (χ2-values)*
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Table A.5 Listening habits. Tests on the hypothesis of coefficient equality between probability functions (χ2-values)*
Full size table

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Favaro, D., Frateschi, C. A discrete choice model of consumption of cultural goods: the case of music. J Cult Econ 31, 205–234 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-007-9043-x

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