Attendance to cultural events and spousal influences: the Italian case

In cultural consumption it is quite reasonable to expect that the formation and theevolution of preferences, and the related individual choice behaviour, is affected byvarious interactions within families, peer and other social groups. Our investigationfocuses on a specific form of “indirect” interaction effect, that is the reciprocalinfluence that a married person’s preferences and characteristics can have on thecultural consumption of her/his partner. Using the last two available nationwide crosssectiondatasets on the leisure activities of the Italian population (ISTAT, 1995 and2000), we estimate the mutual influence of spouses’s educational and culturalbackground, besides other factors, on the consumption of three kinds of culturalactivities, namely museum/exhibition, theatre, and opera and classical music concerts.