Unveiling trends in cultural participation: The case of Slovakia

Abstract

This paper explores the trends in participation in a variety of cultural activities in Slovakia. Although the research on cultural participation has thrived and there have been plenty of empirical studies published about the consumption of cultural products in different countries, there is still a lack of comprehensive research from former post-communist countries. The paper aims to test the link between cultural participation and social and economic characteristics, which has previously been done in other international studies. The cluster analysis suggests four types of Slovak cultural participants—the heritage visitors, the omnivores, the popular genre visitors, and the inactive. The outcomes point to a strong relationship between cultural inactivity and heritage visits to socioeconomic status, while there is a weak relationship between highbrow cultural participation and the upper-class. The results challenge cultural policies to be adjusted for different groups of cultural participants with the objective of increasing the overall consumption of cultural goods in Slovakia.