A case for the rational addiction model: theatre attendance in Türkiye

Abstract This paper investigates the determinants of attendance to theatre in Türkiye. Cultural goods are experience goods and their present consumption is likely to increase future consumption. A rational response of a future price change for an addictive good such as theatre can also affect the current consumption. This paper investigates whether aggregate theatre attendance can show rationally addicted behaviour for the Turkish theatre sector. Since the beginning of the modern Turkish Republic, theatre, as a western art form, has been considered one of the most important cultural goods and services. Today, in many smaller provinces in the country, theatre is provided almost exclusively by a public entity founded specifically for this purpose. In this paper, we test the rational addiction hypothesis for the Turkish theatregoer and we also evaluate the rational addiction hypothesis within a broader framework. We use system GMM to estimate the model and evaluate the rational addiction model more comprehensively than is commonplace in the literature. We employ a panel data of 81 main provinces with 16 years (2007-2022) and find that the rational addiction hypothesis is validated by data on theatre attendance in Türkiye. Other determinants of theatre attendance include price, the price of cinema, and theatregoers’ level of income and education. The number of plays by foreign playwrights, a variable that captures the quality of the production, is found to increase theatre attendance. The presence of other cultural or entertainment opportunities increases theatre attendance in Türkiye. Interestingly, in Türkiye, the presence of other cultural or entertainment opportunities also increases theatre attendance i.e., rather than competing, cultural activities enhance a province’s cultural scene and increase theatre attendance. We also apply our proposed comprehensive evaluation methodology to other studies in the cultural economics literature as well as to a sample that includes the seminal empirical applications of the rational addiction model on cigarettes and alcohol. We show that the rational addiction model fares much better empirically for beneficially addictive cultural goods than for harmful addictive goods.