Cultural Consumption as a Catalyst For Social Inclusion

Introduction - In western societies, there is an increasing divide between different social groups (e.g. autochthonous, recent immigrants, 2nd / 3rd generation immigrants), which is fueled by the social encapsulation and the information bubbles created through social media (Bovens et al., 2014). This divide, strongest amongst young people (< 30 years of age), becomes increasingly visible in leisure, i.e. in the extent to which different groups engage in cultural activities, and also in the type of cultural activities different groups engage in (Voase, 2013). In our view, a broader and more varied pattern of cultural consumption can therefore serve as a catalyst to promote the building of a broader (social and cultural) identity, and as a consequence, to enhance social inclusion. The goal of the present research project therefore is to identify how these different groups of young people experience a wide variety of cultural activities (both inside and outside of their ‘social bubbles’), so as to be able to inform policy makers and marketers of cultural institutions on how to broaden cultural consumption amongst young people. Approach - In an experimental, factorial research design, different groups of participants engaged in a variety of cultural activities: visiting an arts museum, attending a multicultural festival, a classical music concert, or a pop music concert. Crucially, each group attended cultural activities that fit within their own social networks, and cultural activities that do not normally fit into that. Three different state-of-the art quantitative measures were taken to establish how participants experienced the cultural activity: (1) self-reports of experience obtained shortly after the cultural activity, using established questionnaire scales (de Rooij & Bastiaansen, 2017); (2) experience sampling data obtained at regular intervals during the cultural activity, about the extent to which a limited set of emotions were experienced during the cultural activity; (3) physiological indices of emotional engagement (notably heart rate and skin conductance responses) obtained in a continuous measurement during the cultural activity, through the use of wearable recording devices (Empatica wristbands). The data thus obtained were analyzed using a network model approach (Cramer et al., 2012), which allows for a measure of experience as objective as currently possible. Data collection and analysis is currently in progress, and results will be fully available and presented at the time of the conference. Considerations / Conclusions - Although the results of the research project were not yet available at the time of writing, two scientifically innovative aspects of the project are worth emphasizing. First, the use of a three-fold measure of experience overcomes the biases and limitations of a self-report-only measurement of experience (Bastiaansen et al., 2015). Second, using cultural consumption as a tool to enhance social cohesion and social inclusion is a powerful strategy for leisure scientists, as leisure behavior is closely associated with social identity building.

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