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by kolchinski 3033 days ago
I noticed this from the article: The proportion of museumgoers who pay a “suggested” amount has declined from 63 percent to 17 percent over the last 13 years...

Which made me think of something else I've encountered, which is that the percentage of people who respond to phone polls has plummeted over a similar time frame - http://www.pewresearch.org/2017/05/15/what-low-response-rate...

I wonder if these trends are related symptoms of a cultural change away from community-mindedness, and if so, has anyone seen other numbers in the same vein?
2 comments
paxy 3033 days ago
I think it's because more casual and lower income demographics have started visiting museums in that time period.
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user5994461 3033 days ago
The disposable income went down for the vast majority of the population. Don't look further.
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ghaff 3033 days ago
>The proportion of museumgoers who pay a “suggested” amount has declined from 63 percent to 17 percent over the last 13 years...

That's pretty striking. I've always taken the Met's policy in the vein of "You don't HAVE to pay this amount but you really should" and always have. (Even though I admit to not always throwing money in when it's a more casual please donate situation.)

I'm pretty surprised that payments had dipped this low.

I'm not sure I put it in the same class as phone calls though. So many unsolicited phone calls are just random robocall SPAM that it's not as if I'm passing up some societal contribution by not answering.

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kolchinski 3033 days ago
That's a fair point but seems like it's only part of the picture, I just did a bit more digging and it looks like the proportion of people who pick up has dropped by about 1/3 while the proportion of people who agree to participate after talking to the live pollster has dropped by 3x, a similar decline to the proportion who pay the Met. http://www.people-press.org/2012/05/15/assessing-the-represe...

Obviously though drawing conclusions from these two trends would be premature, so I'm hoping someone might think of numbers they've seen on similar topics, whether they align with these or not.

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