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How free admittance affects charged visits to museums: An analysis of the Italian case

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  • Cellini, Roberto
  • Cuccia, Tiziana

Abstract

This paper aims to evaluate whether and how the free admittance to museums and monuments affects the charged visits. We take the Italian state museums and monuments as the case study, and we consider monthly data, aggregate at the national level, from January 1996 to December 2015. Within a multivariate analysis approach, which takes into account the seasonal structure of time series, we document a positive influence of the number of free visitors upon the subsequent number of paying visitors. We also analyse the effect of the change in free admission policy, which has recently occurred in Italy: since July 2014 free admission is no longer reserved to specific segments of population, but it has been extended to all visitors on the first Sunday of each month. We show that this new rule has entailed an increase in both free and charged visits. Our present results can be relevant in the current political debate in Italy, in front of new rules concerning free admission to museums. More in general, we provide pieces of evidence that can be informative in the ever-green debate about free attendance to museum and its relations with individual choices and public policies concerning cultural consumption.

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  • Cellini, Roberto & Cuccia, Tiziana, 2017. "How free admittance affects charged visits to museums: An analysis of the Italian case," MPRA Paper 78067, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:78067
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    Cited by:

    1. Alessio Emanuele Biondo & Roberto Cellini & Tiziana Cuccia, 2020. "Choices on museum attendance: An agent‐based approach," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71(4), pages 882-897, November.
    2. David R. Perkins, 2021. "Thermal Environments and Visitor Attendance in Zoological Parks: Observations in A Humid Continental Climate," Journal of Tourismology, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 7(2), pages 195-225, December.
    3. Roberto Cellini & Tiziana Cuccia & Domenico Lisi, 2020. "Spatial dependence in museum services: an analysis of the Italian case," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 44(4), pages 535-562, December.
    4. Roberto Cellini & Tiziana Cuccia, 2019. "Weather conditions and museum attendance: a case-study from Sicily," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 154(3), pages 511-527, June.
    5. Silvia Noirjean & Marco Mariani & Alessandra Mattei & Fabrizia Mealli, 2020. "Exploiting network information to disentangle spillover effects in a field experiment on teens' museum attendance," Papers 2011.11023, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Museums; Free attendance; Cultural consumption; Seasonal time series.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature

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