Museum funding: Hypothetical philanthropy and fair Price |
Public museums are facing increasing difficulties to cope with
their business, the preservation of cultural heritage, due to
tight budgetary policies undertaken everywhere. The idea that
public funding has to be complemented by market oriented
activities is contemporary commonly accepted. Market oriented
activities means to allocate a fee to visitors, to raise some
fund from sponsors, selling books, and other artistic articles.
The museum visitor is relatively better educated, better paid and
more professional, than the non visitor in the population,
DiMaggio (1991). This may enable the museum to allocate a fair
fee and also to raise some funds using the visitor as a sponsor,
appealing to philanthropy, since it is recognized that culture is
a learning-by -consuming good, and those who consume it are the
ones that praise it more, and are willing to pay for it. In this
paper we test this proposition on two Lisbon museums: The Chiado
Museum and the Ethnologic museum, using a survey on visitors
willingness to pay performed in 1996.
Key words: Museum funding, fair price, Philanthropy, willingness
to pay.
Carlos Pestana Barros