Determinants of performing arts attendance in Taiwan: a multivariate probit analysis

This article uses data collected from a telephone survey of Taiwanese residents to investigate the live performance attendances at four types of performing arts: contemporary drama, traditional theatre, dance and music. We estimate a Multivariate Probit (MVP) model to characterize the audience for each type of performing arts and to find out the pairwise correlations across performing arts. The audience of traditional theatre appears to be quite different from that of the other three types of performing arts. We also show significant and positive correlations across attendances at all four performing arts, with the correlation coefficient between dance and music being the highest. This indicates that performing arts are complements and audiences tend to be 'omnivorous' rather than 'univorous'.