The research on the determinants of demand and participation in cultural events is still rather sparse and fragmented today. Whereas there is already an established empirical evidence with respect to the standard determinants such as admission price, education and income, more research is required to explore the impact of other important factors affecting visits at cultural events. This applies, among others, to socio-economic and socio-demographic characteristics of the visitors, both subjective (perceived) and objective quality of the cultural event, habit and rational addiction, and time-allocation decisions of individuals.
There also has been more attention paid in the literature to the determinants of attendance at highbrow cultural events such as theatre, classical music concerts, or visiting museums than at the lowbrow or more popular cultural events. This is mainly due to the cost trap experienced by suppliers of the former events as they experience decreasing revenues and increasing wage costs over time (Baumol and Bowen, 1966). Furthermore, the definition of cultural events tends to be ‘almost completely blurred’ due to increased variety of the digital cultural supply today (Peukert, 2019). Therefore, a more holistic research on the factors affecting demand and participation in all cultural events is essential.