CULTURAL ECONOMICS and MUSEUM BEHAVIOUR: A COMMENT
| Published date | 01 November 1995 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1995.tb01170.x |
| Author | Peter Johnson |
| Date | 01 November 1995 |
Srorrrshlournal
of
PolrnralEcononry.
Vol
42, No.
4,
November
1995
0
Scotush
Economic
Society
IS95.
Published by Blackwell Publishers.
108
Cowlcy Road, Oxford
OX4
IJF.
UK
and
238 Main
Street.
Cambndgc, MA 02142. USA
CULTURAL ECONOMICS
AND
MUSEUM
BEHAVIOUR:
A
COMMENT
Peter Johnson*
In
a recent interesting article in this journal, Bruno Frey
(1994)
examines ways
in
which a museum might increase revenues. He labels the widespread practice
of charging only one price per entry, whatever the demand, as ‘inflexible’. He
then argues that museums should engage in price discrimination,
so
that a higher
price is charged to visitors who have a more inelastic demand. He applies this
principle as follows:
In
times
of
high demand,
i.e. during those hours of the day, those days of the
week and those weeks
of
the
year when a lot of people want to visit a
particular museum,
a higher
entry
fee should be charged than
in
periods
of
low
demand.
In
particular, when large numbers of tourists decide to visit the
museum in the summer, prices could be raised. The
increase
in
revenue
could
be
used to pay the additional cost of extending the opening hours, e.g. into
the late evening (emphasis added).
The main purpose of this note
is
to
point out that Frey’s argument assumes an
inverse relationship between the scale of demand, at a given price, and the price
elasticity of that demand. Such a relationship however, may
or
may not be
empirically valid. Peak demand may sometimes
be
relatively
more
price elastic
than
off
peak demand. It is not difficult
to
think of reasons why this may be
so.
For example, a significant part of the demand for museum visiting during the
busy summer months
is
likely to come from families, the timing of whose visits
is constrained by school holidays, and who are likely to be relatively
more
price
sensitive, because of income constraints, than (say) couples with
no
family
responsibilities who are able to utilise
off
peak times. Again, it may be higher
income groups, with lower price elasticities, who have the greater flexibility to
visit during
off
peak times.’ If, then, a museum wishes to increase its revenues,
there may
be
a case
for
having relatively
lower
prices in the peak, and relatively
higher
prices in the
off
peak.
‘Some rather tentative evidence
to
support this proposition comes from visitor surveys
conducted by Barry Thomas and the author at the North of England
Open
Air Museum at
Beamish in 1989 (Johnson and Thomas, 1992, pp. 94-5).
In
the summer (peak) survey 21%
of
respondents were classified as being in ‘professional’ occupations whereas the percentage
for the winter
(off
peak) survey was
34.
The percentages for unskilled manual occupations
were
17
and 4 respectively.
*University
of
Durham
465
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