Determinants for cultural and sports attendance and practice in the U.S.A.

Abstract

Cultural and sport events are two of the most common leisure activities nowadays. However, leisure time is limited and there may not be sufficient time to enjoy all activities desired. This research studies the effect of different determinants on people when trying to pick the right activity for them thanks to the information retrieved from the SPPA in the US. This is done following a bivariate probit model, focusing on the marginal effects. Results show us that due to the high estimated tetrachoric correlation values, both activities are going to be complimentary. Apart from that, determinants such as income, age, gender, race and even disabilities have a strong effect when deciding the activity. Individual’s education has the strongest effect of them all, making higher educated people the most likely people to choose sport or cultural. This is robust to considering only highbrow or also lowbrow cultural practices. The complementarity also exists between cultural events and practices and between attendance at sports events and practice of sports.