Museum Visits,Education, and Topic Interest |
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| Authors: | ADAM BICKFORD |
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| Abstract: | This paper compares two perspectives on why individuals visit museums using data from a telephone survey conducted in Minnesota in 1996. One perspective holds that individuals visit museums because of interest in the materials exhibited. Another holds that visits to museums are markers of social status, influenced more by social class variables, such as educational attainment. Information from the survey allows for construction of a set of interest indices, which reflect the respondents' levels of interest in various museum topics. The survey data also allow the estimation of regression models that test the relative roles of interest versus respondents' educational attainment as indicators of their likelihood of visiting any one of five different types of museums. Results show that topic interest is a stronger predictor than educational attainment. The implications for attracting museum visitors are discussed. |
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