Theatre Attendance, Output Characteristics, Quality, Germany
The purpose of this paper is to test the sensitivity of theatre attendance in Germany to a number of unique output characteristics of the performing arts, as well as the usual economic variables of price and income. This is made possible by the availability of an exceptionally rich data set relating to the very large theatre sector in Germany. The econometric results indicate that the output characteristics used do impact significantly on theatre attendance in Germany and possibly more so than any of the usual standard economic variables. This suggests that theatre, and the performing arts in general, are indeed “different” and that analysis of demand functions for them should take more account of output-characteristic factors.