[ghaff]

>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.

[kolchinski]

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.