Entrance fees as a subjective barrier to visiting museums

In a 1995 representative survey, 1,080 Germans were asked by standardized questionnaire to assess the subjective significance of 23 motives and barriers to visiting art museums, history museums and technology museums on a scale from 1 (very unimportant motive/barrier) to 5 (very important motive/barrier). An analysis of the results of the survey revealed entrance fees to be the only significant subjective barrier. In contrast to recent price elasticity studies of cultural demand, this study uses a micro-level approach - comparing individual socioeconomic and geographic characteristics with individual and subjective assessments of museum entrance fees as a barrier. The results of an ordered-probit analysis suggest income to be the only significant individual characteristic which can explain this subjective assessment. However, using correspondence analysis, several other individual characteristics such as education and professional status also appear to have a relative impact on the subjective assessment of entrance fees. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers.