CULTURAL ECONOMICS and MUSEUM BEHAVIOUR: A REPLY
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1995.tb01171.x |
| Published date | 01 November 1995 |
| Date | 01 November 1995 |
| Author | Bruno S. Frey |
Srorrish
Journal
of
Polirirol
Economy.
Vol.
42,
No,
4.
Novemkr
1995
0
Scottish
Economic Society
1995.
Published by Blackwell Publishers.
108
Cowley Road, Oxford
OX4
IJF.
UK
and
238 Main
Streer,
Cambridge.
MA 02142. USA
CULTURAL
ECONOMICS
AND
MUSEUM
BEHAVIOUR: A
REPLY
Bruno
S.
Frey“
Peter Johnson in his comment (see previous article) is quite correct in stating
that a high demand for museum visits
is
not necessarily
connected with a low
price elasticity of demand.
I
am
glad that he points out the lack of precision in
my paper (1994). I nevertheless wish to argue that very important
empirical
cases exist in which the high demand for museum visits derives from persons
exhibiting a low price elasticity
so
that a price rise increases museum revenues. I
am thinking of museums in tourist locations such as the Accademia
or
the
Palazzo Ducale in Venice, the Uffici in Florence, the hado in Madrid, and to a
considerable extent
also
the National Gallery in London.
For
such museums
there
are
good reasons to assume that a price rise (within reasonable limits)
hardly affects attendance figures. In art cities, a visit to the world famous
museums is an essential part of the tourists’ holiday experience. In the case of
collectively organized trips, the visit to such world-famous museums is in most
cases included in the prearranged package. The increase in the ticket price (say
by ten
Eus)
is then subjectively not related to the previous level of the entry
price but rather to the expenditures for the trip as a whole. A given price rise is
then, in comparison, perceived to be small only and does not have much impact
on museum demand (for the general argument, see Thaler 1980; more
specifically for museum admission fees see Blattberg and Broderick, 1991).
Empirical evidence supports these theoretical notions. Attendance figures at
the Museum of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, for instance, have been fairly
stable although admission fees for the exhibitions presented in the last years
have increased by slightly more than 10% on average. In fact, the number of
visitors to the Palazzo Ducale seems
to
be in direct proportion to the number of
people visiting the centre of Venice (ICARE, 1994).
Concerning museum behaviour, Johnson in
his
comment (footnote
2)
questions the statement in my previous article
‘A
museum directorate which can
independently determine its budget and
therefore
has an incentive to increase
revenue, has various possibilities to do
so’
(emphasis added). He is again
formally quite right: Behaviour not only depends on constraints but also on the
preferences of museum decision makers (but not on ‘the museum’s objectives’
as Johnson writes because institutions have no preferences
or
utilities).
However, following Stigler and Becker’s (1977) methodology,
it
is
more useful
to analyze differences in
institutional conditions
than to speculate (without
*University
of
Zurich
461
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