Art Museums in Financial Distress

The subsidy cut for art and culture by the Dutch government has left museums in turmoil. In order for museums to overcome this situation they have to exploit alternative funding to cover costs. Within this context, this thesis explores the possibilities for museums to generate donations from their visitors and investigates if Dutch art museum visitors are willing to donate to a special fund to support the museum financially. In addition, this thesis identifies the personal motivations that drive the visitors to contribute. The contingent valuation method was used in order to elicit the WTD of the respondents. The data for this research was gathered through the distribution of surveys among the visitors of the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Van Abbemuseum and Cobra Museum as they were nearing the exit. With a dataset of 120 completed surveys a general profile of the art museum visitor could be formed, followed by an analysis of the WTD of the respondents. This analysis shows that a small majority of 51% is willing to contribute, which led to a mean donation of €28,21 when excluding zero-bids. The significant variables that mainly explain the WTD were age, location and marital status. Additionally, the analysis of the intrinsic motivations shows that visitors contribute out of social motivations as they are aware of the financial situation and are concerned with the museums’ welfare. However, the zero-bids motivations indicate that a large share of the visitors believes that the government is responsible for museums and should continue their financial support. Consequently, this thesis presents results that show the existence of a modest support base among art museum visitors however; it depends on the museums’ effort to utilize this potential source of income and to set these donations in motion