Analysing visits to English museums 1850–2015: a research note

Abstract

Understanding why people visit museums is of interest to both cultural economics and museum studies. Most existing research relies on survey data concerned with visitors, their immediate background, and their experience of a particular museum. Very few studies (e.g. Chen & Della Change, 2016;Skinner et al., 2009) have taken a more general perspective and analysed macro-level societal factors, such as inflation, educational attainment and unemployment, and their influence on the number of visits to museums. The conventional approach being reliance on surveys of museum visitors used to understand what drives visits and general views on museums. In a departure from these conventional approaches, this article presents such an approach, using a unique dataset of visit counts for 40 English museums and visitor attractions spanning the period 1850-2015, unless otherwise specified the word "museum" shall in this article cover both types It examines the effect of socio-economic factors on visits using panel data analysis and macro-level variables. The results suggest that inflation rates, average earnings, and educational level (using the indicator of secondary school attendance) all significantly influence the number of visits made. However, the most important variable is the number of visits recorded for the previous year. These findings are discussed in relation to existing studies, and some suggestions for future research are proposed.

Experiencia cultural, calidad y respuesta en el Museo de las Momias en Guanajuato, México

“…Es decir, la experiencia también se corresponde con factores externos como la comunidad o la percepción del impacto económico. Por eso, se ha argumentado que visitar un museo es un proceso complejo que incluso se entrelaza con factores socioeconómicos y en un nivel más macro (Hansen, 2018), con factores internos como lo cognitivo, el aprendizaje, la influencia en el conocimiento y los servicios ofertados en la tienda del museo pueden afectar la experiencia (Kent, 2010). De ahí la importancia que tiene el investigar las experiencias que se generan al visitar un museo, es multifacético, por ejemplo, existen informes de que el recorrido que las personas hacen en el recinto, la ruta, y el tiempo influyen en la saciedad y lo placentero de la visita, entre más tiempo y un conocimiento previo de la visita, mejor experiencia (Antón et al, 2018).…”

Quantitative Visitors' Analisys to the Farm Cultural Park Museum (Fcp), in Favara, Sicily (Italy)

“…When it comes to visitors, it is mentioned that the correlation between the mission of the museum's collection and the diversity of visitors is weak. The article of Hansen (2018) presents an approach, using a unique dataset of visit counts for 40 English museums and visitor attractions spanning the period 1850-2015. The word museum cover in this article both types.…”