Weather conditions and museum attendance: a case-study from Sicily

Abstract

This paper evaluates whether and how weather conditions affect museum attendance. As a case study, we examine the daily attendance at the Museo Regionale della Ceramica (Regional Museum of Ceramics) in Caltagirone, Sicily (Italy), over the period starting from 1 January 2008 to 31 December 2016. In addition to the daily and monthly fixed effects and the influence of tourism, which are investigated by the available literature, we document a significant effect of weather conditions, specifically temperature and rainfall, which work in an asymmetric way across the different seasons. Temperature has a significant non-monotonic effect on museum attendance, with an increase having a positive impact in low-temperature (non-summer) months and a negative impact in high-temperature (summer) season; rainfalls encourage museum visits but only during summer months. Some long-term projections concerning the impact of weather modifications upon museum attendance due to climate change are proposed and discussed.