Cultural participation in Italy - What are the factors influencing museums’ attendance?

The aim of this study is to analyze the reasons behind cultural participation related to museums in Italy. Cultural participation is indeed an important subject, widely investigated and especially related to the implementation of cultural policies. Studying cultural participation and most specifically museums’ attendance in Italy can help to understand how to ameliorate Italian’s access to museums and what are the main factors to focus on. Data are part of an extensive survey named “Aspetti della vita quotidiana” (daily life’s aspects) by the Italian National Institute of Statistica (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica - Istat) in the year 2018. This data set is a valuable source to see if, how, and in which ways variables related to age, sex, education, geographical location and income influence the participation and non-participation of Italian museums. A negative binomial model is used to study this matter. Results show that education, sex, age and income influence the attendance of Italian museum in different ways. Moreover, this thesis invites future researches to focus on each of these specific matters at a national level in order to implement Italian cultural policies that take cultural access into account.