Victoria Ateca-Amestoy

The cluster of innovations brought about by information and communication technology (ICT) is dramatically changing the ways in which the visual arts can be produced and consumed. By using the USA 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, we explore visual arts consumption through both onsite attendance at museums and electronic and digital media. To disentangle the complexity of the relationship of different forms of museums attendance, both a multinomial logit and a recursive bivariate probit model are estimated to obtain direct and indirect effects of the alternative forms of participation. Results demonstrate that there are no age consumer differences in the form they consume visual arts. Noticeable differences concern race, gender, families with children attending arts school, and type of occupation. In addition, results show that there is a trade-off between online and onsite visits. Visiting museums and art galleries have a positive correlation with the digital access to visual arts, both through handheld and mobile devices and via the internet, whilst the same correlation is not found for internet access on museum attendance. This means that for many consumers, online attendance is the only way to overcome time constraints and other costs involved in an onsite visit.

In this paper, we explore the relationship between different ways of getting engaged with cultural heritage and life satisfaction. Using data from a representative sample of the population of the 28 members of the European Union in 2017 collected in the Eurobarometer 88.1 (2017), we explore the relationship between use and non-use values and individual subjective well-being measured as life satisfaction. We present the results derived from the estimation of an ordered probit model where life satisfaction is a function of living near to heritage resources to represent non-use values, different ways of heritage participation (tangible, intangible, digital, and volunteering), and the usual explanatory variables that have been found to be predictors of life satisfaction. Our results indicate that the chances of being more satisfied with ones’ life increase with volunteering activities, with visits to heritage institutions, and with digital engagement. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the multifaceted values of heritage.

We study how education affects cultural and sports attendance of spouses using the Survey on Living Conditions 2015. With a sample of 7920 heterosexual couples, we estimate bivariate models for attendance to cinema, visits to monuments, life performances and sports events. We conduct research at the intra-household level and estimate the marginal effect of female and male characteristics over the probability of having a household where both members participate in the same type of social activity. Own and spouse’s education, income and having young children (0–3 years old) are the main drivers of both partners’ attending the same activities. Both male and female education have a positive, but not statistically different effect, on these probabilities. The probability of both spouses participating in culture and sports activities increases with income and decreases with the presence of young children.

En este trabajo discutimos la relevancia del capital humano para explicar diferencias en el consumo cultural y estimamos el efecto que la disponibilidad de este recurso personal tiene en las diferencias en la asistencia a actividades culturales. Utilizamos para ello datos de la Encuesta de Participación Pública en la Artes del año 2002 para Estados Unidos. Estimamos ecuaciones de participación para las 7 actividades de referencia definidas por el National Endowment for the Arts para explicar el número de veces que un individuo ha asistido a lo largo de un año a esas actividades. El concepto de capital cultural que utilizamos es el de un recurso personal que aumenta la productividad de los individuos que satisfacen sus necesidades culturales a través de consumo de bienes culturales. Explicamos la dotación de este tipo de capital cultural que tiene cada individuo a través de la educación formal de sus padres, de la educación general que han recibido y de diferentes tipos de educación cultural específica. Los modelos de participación son estimados usando modelos de regresión para datos de recuento, de todos ellos, seleccionamos un modelo binomial negativo con inflación de ceros.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how public libraries have been conceptualized and measured in official Spanish statistics over the past 15 years. This allows us to reflect on the transformation of the very nature and aims of libraries during the first 15 years of the 21st century. We examine the main official statistical source of information on cultural participation, the Survey on Cultural Habits and Practices in Spain, and track the impact of social change and digitization on library services. By analysing the 2002–2003, 2006–2007, 2010–2011 and 2014–2015 surveys, we monitor changes in the questionnaires and in the derived indicators, and relate the findings to general trends and challenges for public libraries in contemporary societies.