Going to the Museum: A Quantitative Insight into Rotterdam Art Museum Visitors

This thesis revolves art museums’ visitors, their characteristics and relation with the specific museums they visit, as well as differences with non-visitors. The theoretical framework presented intends to give an overview on the development of museums approach to their visitors in terms of openness and inclusiveness. Indeed, museums have a reputation of elitism that is believed to have kept lower classes and marginalized groups away from them during history. However, in the last decades, an attempt has been made to attract larger audiences and increase inclusiveness. Marketing strategies have been implemented and museums have largely changed their approach, focusing on the visitor experience. However, relatively few is known about visitors and their characteristics. I also suggest the use of behavioral strategies like nudging and explain their potential usefulness for cultural policies and museums specifically. Therefore, this thesis attempts to give an insight on visitors and non-visitors of art museums in Rotterdam, namely Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Kunsthal Rotterdam and Witte de Witte Center for Contemporary Art. Through quantitative analysis of a dataset on cultural participation provided by the Municipality of Rotterdam, profiles of visitors and non-visitors of the three museums and of a general “museum variable” are created through the analysis of their socio-demographic characteristics, personality traits and other leisure activities they carry out. Results reveals that Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s and general museums’ visitors reflect the expectation of being generally older, richer, white and more highly educated, while Kunsthal and WdW visitors are younger, and WdW visitors are also more ethnically diverse. It is showed that this WdW peculiarity might derive from its location and from lower entrance fees, while the characteristics of Kunsthal visitors might also derive from lower fees compared to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Moreover, differences in visitor profiles might derive from the two museums images and “personalities” that are presented here through personal observations. The visitors’ and non-visitors’ profiles based on personality traits reveal that visitors present characteristics that might be explained through their higher level of cultural capital (they perceive themselves as more intelligent and more balanced, for instance). Because profiles of non-visitors correspond to that of less highly educated individuals who perceive themselves as less intelligent than visitors, in addition to being generally less highly educated, the use of nudging techniques are suggested to museum boards and policy makers that might be willing to enlarge their audience. These strategies are indeed suggested in cases where people might face challenging choices. Museum boards and policy makers that are willing to enlarge art museums’ audiences might therefore benefit from the results of this thesis.