Why don’t we do what we want? Non-consumers and the public dilemma in cultural promotion.

We deal with tastes and preferences, revising the linkages between both in order to analyse the special case where we express preferences to goods that do not appeal to us. We deduce the concept of a deconstructed demand and define two types of goods (embarrassing and reputable). With the help of this structure we build a demand function for cultural promotion, where the non-market-expressed non-consumers’ preferences are the basis of the “demand for cultural policies”. Finally, in this framework the State faces a dilemma that could be solved in different ways.