Cultural demand of adolescents in Helsinki 2011
Seppo Suominen, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences
Hietakummuntie 1 A, FIN-00700 Helsinki, Finland
Abstact
The activity to visit different cultural activities of the adolescents living in Helsinki is analysed. Visiting movies at the cinema was the most important or the most general in 2011. The opera or the ballet and art exhibitions are least visited. Music concerts and theatre visits are between these extremes. Previous studies have revealed that the gender, age and educational level are very important determinants of cultural demand. Moreover, consumer’s wealth or earnings have an influence on the participation decision. Using the data of adolescents the consumer’s wealth or earnings are irrelevant, however their parents’ (or household’s) incomes or wealth are used as proxy for consumer’s incomes to explain cultural demand. About 13 percent of adolescents in Helsinki can be classified as immigrants or relevant. They or their parents were not born in Finland. The role of immigration on the cultural demand is studied in this paper.
The data collected in 2011 covers pupils aged 11 – 16 and students aged 16 – 18. Especially the older students in the sample have the possibility to work during their leisure time. It seems that wage incomes have an impact on theatre and opera/ballet attendance while adolescents’ wage incomes have any impact on cinema, concert or art exhibition visits. Age, gender, the number of siblings and mother’s education have on impact on cultural demand. The ability to speak (ethnic origin) Somali or Arabic have a positive impact on cultural demand while those who have an Estonian or Russian origin do not differ from original population (Finnish or Swedish).
All estimations use seemingly unrelated regression (SURE) analysis. The model is a standard constant elasticity of substitution (CES) function, which is used to derive the necessary equilibrium conditions and justify the model form.
Keywords
Adolescents, Helsinki, Immigrants, Cultural participation
Word count: 7933
Introduction
In Finland, the municipalities are partially responsible for the public financing of the culture and for the cultural services. The services are produced in the municipalities or they are arranged in cooperation with others or they are bought from the market. The cultural services of municipalities are financed with the sales revenues, with their own tax revenues and state subsidises of municipalities (Ruusuvirta and Saukkonen 2014). The net operating costs (revenue - cost)[1] vary from about 100 € to about 200 € per inhabitant of a municipality in the biggest Finnish cities in 2013. Due to this large variation in cultural budget it is useful to know how this amount of money is spread across different groups.Ruusuvirta and Saikkonen (2014) define the cultural activity of a municipality as follows: cultural activity refers to operation which takes place in libraries, the art institutions and culture institutions, culture houses and cultural centres and art educational institutions and furthermore, the general culture activity that has been arranged, produced or ordered by the municipality or other branch of administration but it does not include private theatres or cinemas outside municipality or state subsidies. In general, we can divide the cultural consumption into different groups based on age or other socio-economic criteria. This segmentation partially reveals the incidence of subsidises. However, this analysis must be carried out with caution since simultaneously we should know what the tax burden of each socio-economic segment is. It is well known that women and highly educated are more active participating in various cultural events (Kulttuuripuntari 1999, Kulttuurijaviestintä 2001:5, Suominen 2013, 88). Due to progressive income taxation, high income earners pay a larger share of the taxes, therefore a straightforward analysis of the incidence of subsidizes that does not consider both the participating and tax burden might be misleading.
In Finland men and people with lower educational level are typically more interested in sports related issues, however with one disparity in gender: men more often go to see a sports event and women are more active exercisers (Suominen 2013, 55). In general, this (women more active) is exceptional since worldwide men are more active exercisers (Downward 2007 or Cabane and Lechner 2014). Therefore, we have a reason to assume that nationality has an impact on leisure activities, which are related to many individual socio-economic factors as Virtanen (2007) shows. Since in Finland, the capital region the share of people whose mother tongue is not Finnish, Swedish or Sami (most often spoken in northern Finland, Lapland) is about 12 - 13 %, it is interesting to study what is the role of foreigners (mother tongue is not any of the three mentioned) on cultural activities. Moreover, it is well known that the cultural participation of an adolescent is correlated with their parents’ educational level and cultural taste (van Eijck 1999, Nagel and Ganzeboom 2002). In this study,the data was collected in 2011 about the leisure activities of adolescents in Helsinki (Keskinen and Nyholm 2011). With this data, it is possible to study the cultural participation or activities of those whose native tongue is not Finnish, Swedish or Sami, i.e. some foreign language or simply those who have an immigrant family background and compare the cultural participation of these with native Finns. The aim of this study is to investigate the leisure activities of adolescents in Helsinki and find out whether are any differences based on native tongue.
Literature
Most of the studies on leisure time cultural activity report frequencies. One of the first is Bruun’s (1952) study. In 1951, the youth spent about half of their leisure time outside their home. In the sample (n = 897) the questions were about how young people had visited religious services, cinema, dance, their friends or sport events. Cinema was popular, since almost 20 % responded that they saw a movie at the cinema during last month at least five times and about 85 - 90 % at least once. Young men were more interested in cinema than young women. During last month about 15 % had visited while dance was substantially more popular (about 35 - 40 % - men more active). Theatre or opera attendance differences across gender, mother tongue and between clerical staff and pupils were significant.
The 1981 survey (Leskinen 1984) on leisure activities of the youth in Helsinki is more detailed than the 1951 survey. Leskinen shows that among 10 - 15 years old there are substantial differences across girls and boys. Girls sing more actively while boys are more interested in engines and technology. The 1981 study includes a large survey on sport activities. During the winter, indoor ball games were important although the questionnaire emphasized that school sports should be eliminated. Bicycling, swimming and walking were the most often mentioned summer habits. Among the 10 - 15 -year-old cinema was much more common than sports events, dance or disco.
Siurala (1991) raises computer games and programming into the classification of creative hobbies of adolescents. Boys were more active in gaming and programming than girls. Siurala notices that the structure of creative hobbies was rather stable from 1982 to 1990. The share of those that do not have any hobbies wasstable as well as the structure of different hobbies. A substantial gender difference was present as before. Drawing, painting and classical music were the hobbies of girls while rock music instruments and computers were the ploys of boys. During two decades from 1980 to 2000 the structure of the hobbies among adolescents in Helsinki was rather stable (Keskinen 2001). The survey of 2000 (Keskinen 2001) classifies hobbies into four groups: traditional creative hobbies, reading, computer related hobbies and games. Partially computed related hobbies and games can be classified as creative hobbies. Among sports swimming and dance had become more popular than they were earlier. Football was the most important for boys, floorball was the second in order, and basketball, badminton and ice hockey were next. Dance and gymnastics were more favoured by girls than by boys. Cinema holda strong position among hobbies. More than half of the youth in Helsinki had seen a movie at the cinema once a month in the spring of 2000. Summer job that had become more common since the 1980’s and that has had a substantial impact on hobbies. The supply of summer jobs was generous and even as young as 13 years old could get a summer job (Keskinen 2001). The survey of 2000 did not contain any questions about theatre or opera. A nationwide survey on leisure activities of the youth in 2009 (Myllyniemi 2009) does not have anything on cinema, theatres etc. while a nationwide survey in 2013 (Myllyniemi and Berg 2013) combines movies, theatres, concerts and art exhibitions. The most common was cinema (and theatres, concerts and art exhibitions) but if the regularity of the activity is considered then console and computer games and reading were more common. In the 2013 survey, there was a statement concerning the image of sport: “sporty active people are in general more active”. Somewhat less than 50 % of the respondents agreed with the statement while more than 50 % rejected that argument. The person’s education is related with the sport activity. Those with higher education or those who are studying for a high education are more active sport exercisers. The sport activity of a youngperson is higher if her/his mother has a high education. The share of not active sport exercisers is large if the household’s incomes are low. The most top-rated modes among children and young (age 7 - 29) were jogging, gym, cycling and walking and only after those the team sports, like floorball and football were mentioned. Boys favoured football, floorball and ice hockey while the top-rated modes of girls were jogging, walking, riding and dance. The cultural activities among the youth in Helsinki were very similar as they were in south-western Finland, Turku area (Haanpää, Ehrs, Tiensuu-Tsiopoulos, Kaljonen and Lagström 2009 or Löfblom 2013).
The surveys made by the Statistics Helsinki or nationwide reports typically present participation frequencies. However, the participation data in relation to socio-economic variables using a multivariate analysis has been almost totally neglected. Without a model and a multivariate analysis, a detailed description of the phenomenon is incomplete. Virtanen (2007) used the analysis of variance and logistic regression analysis in explaining cultural consumption across European Union countries. She showed that the education, age, nationality, gender and profession of a person have an impact on the choice of cultural consumption. The focus in Virtanen’s study was not in the choices of young people. Willekens and Lievens (2014), van Steen, Vlegels and Lievens (2015) have similar results. Immigrants seem to participate less than the original population into sports associations and clubs and local activities in Ireland (Coughlan, Doherty, O’Neill and McGuire 2014). However, there was no difference in the cultural club participation if the immigrant speaks English well. If the language skills were not good, the cultural participation would be lower even when the factors have been considered. The other factors in the study were education, gender, marital status, the place of television and console in the bedroom.
This study uses the same data as Keskinen (2012). Movies at the cinema were the most popular mode as expected in 2011.59 % of the 11 - 15 years old living in Helsinki had seen a movie at the cinema once a month. The share is bigger than it was in 1982 (54 %) or 1990 (44 %). In 2011, the share of those who had visited theatre was 7 %, art exhibition 6 %, a concert 8 % and opera or ballet only 4 %. The popularity of those last mentioned (concert, opera or ballet) has somewhat increased since 1982 or 1990 while the popularity of theatre or art exhibition had lowered.
The next chapter presents a model which is used to study the demand for cultural events and the factors explaining it among the youth in Helsinki and compare the possible differences between youth of immigrant background and youth of original population (whose mother tongue is Finnish, Swedish or Sami). The factors that should have an impact on the demand are the following: parents’ (father and mother) education, the age of the respondent, mother tongue, gender, a variable measuring wealth of the household and the employment status of the respondent.
Model
The demand for the cultural events of the youth in Helsinki is modelled by using a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) function. García, Lera-López and Suárez (2011) used that model to estimate the time used for sports in Spain. The same model is used also in this study. The preferences of the young consumers are indicated with the time used into different leisure activities, like movies at the cinema le and theatre attendance lt and the net incomes, m. CES function is convenient due to its handy marginal rate of substitution features. Let us assume that the consumer has the following maximization problem:
Where U denotes utility, is a useful parameter to express marginal rate of substitution[2]. and are positive parameters, w denotes the hourly wage, T is time available (i.e. 168 hours per week). When the optimization problem is solved, the demand functions of the movie demand (le) and theatre demand (lt) can be obtained. In the interior point solution, the marginal rate of substitution of the net income (m) and demand for movies and theatre equal the hourly wage (w).
The equilibrium conditions (2) and (3) show that the marginal rate of substitution between any two components does not depend on the third in the CES function. After some manipulation two estimable functions are easily derived.
The unobservable and observable factors that have an impact on the demand for leisure activities of the young people in Helsinki can be considered as follows:
whereZe and Zt represent various socio-economic factors that have an impact on utility and leisure activities and and are unobservable random variables. If is it assumed that and are two-dimensionally standard normally distributed, a linear demand system for leisure activities can be estimated with seemingly unrelated systems (SUR) method. The following equations are estimated.
In both equations above the demand for movies and theatre is in the denominator of the variable to be explained, thus the parameter estimates must be interpreted conversely: a positive parameter denotes that the factor diminishes the demand and vice versa. Only some socio-economic variables that have been shown to have an impact (Virtanen 2007, Willekens and Lievens 2014, Coughlan, Doherty, O’Neill and McGuire 2014, van Steen, VlegelsjaLievens 2015) on the leisure activities are available: gender, mother tongue (“can you speak or write some other language?”), age, education, the birth country of father and mother, the education of father and mother, and the number of siblings. The incomes of the respondent or the household of the respondent is not known, therefore three alternative proxies are used to measure incomes. Table 2 presents the variables used in this study.
The equations (8) and (9) have two leisure activities, movies at the cinema and theatre. However, the data available (FSD2794 NuoretHelsingissä 2011) contains more suitable leisure activities, like participation or attendance at the opera or ballet, a concert or art exhibition. Figure 1 shows the questionnaire (in Finnish)
Figure 1: Question 18 in the questionnaire.
Results
The data was collected by the Statistics Helsinki in the spring of 2011 (14th March – 26th May 2011). The target group contains primary school pupils (classes 5 to 9) and secondary school, both high school and vocational school students (classes 1 and 2). Internet with discretionary cluster sampling was used in collecting the data (Keskinen and Nyholm 2011). The response rate in the cross-section data is 71.7 with 1433 respondents. Table 1 presents some descriptive statistics on the cultural participation of 10 – 20- year-old boys and girls living in Helsinki. Roughly half of them have seen a movie at the cinema at least once a month. The second most popular event was a concert and the third was theatre. Art exhibition and opera or ballet have been least popular. There is statistically significant difference between boys and girls. Girls seem to respond “not at all” less frequently than boys regardless of the cultural subject. On the contrary, boys seem to respond “almost daily” or “every week” more frequently than girls.
Boys, n = 633 / Girls, n = 800 / Different?n / Almost daily / Weekly / Monthly / Lessoften / Not at all / Data missing / n / Almost daily / Weekly / Monthly / Lessoften / Not at all / Data missing / χ2
Movies / 609 / 13 / 33 / 285 / 261 / 17 / 24 / 789 / 4 / 45 / 472 / 257 / 11 / 11 / 31.467***
Σ(%) / 2.1 / 7.6 / 54.4 / 97.2 / 100 / 0.5 / 6.2 / 49.6 / 98.6 / 100
Theatre / 600 / 9 / 5 / 21 / 264 / 301 / 33 / 787 / 3 / 2 / 55 / 507 / 220 / 13 / 85.010***
Σ(%) / 1.5 / 2.3 / 5.8 / 49.8 / 100 / 0.4 / 0.6 / 7.6 / 72.0 / 100
Operaorballet / 603 / 10 / 2 / 9 / 116 / 466 / 30 / 789 / 5 / 2 / 20 / 345 / 417 / 11 / 99.232***
Σ(%) / 1.7 / 2.0 / 3.5 / 22.7 / 100 / 0.6 / 0.9 / 3.4 / 47.1 / 100
Concert / 602 / 7 / 6 / 48 / 273 / 268 / 31 / 789 / 2 / 4 / 54 / 532 / 197 / 11 / 73.898***
Σ(%) / 1.1 / 2.2 / 10.1 / 55.5 / 100 / 0.2 / 0.8 / 7.6 / 75.0 / 100
Artexhibition / 601 / 9 / 2 / 12 / 200 / 378 / 32 / 788 / 3 / 4 / 41 / 366 / 374 / 12 / 43.861***
Σ(%) / 1.0 / 1.8 / 3.8 / 37.1 / 100 / 0.4 / 0.9 / 6.1 / 52.5 / 100
Table 1: How often do you go to movies, theatre, opera or ballet, concert or art exhibition? Frequencies and cumulative frequencies (e.g. 7.6 % of boys go to movies almost daily or weekly). The last column on the right contains χ2statistics on the similarity of boys’ and girls’ visiting frequency.