Cultural consumption and Covid-19: evidence from the Taking Part and COVID-19 Cultural Participation Monitor surveys

No substitute for the real thing? Physical and digital cultural participation in Denmark during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…We find that (a) physical cultural participation decreased significantly in Denmark during the two COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021; (b) physical participation did not return to its pre-pandemic level by the end of 2021; (c) individuals did not substitute physical cultural participation with digital cultural participation; and (d) socioeconomic gradients decreased with regard to physical (but not digital) cultural participation. Our results contribute to a small literature on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cultural participation (Bone et al, 2022;Choi et al, 2020;Codagnone et al, 2021;Feder et al, 2022;Hall et al, 2021;Roberts, 2020) by including time-series data, a longer time window, physical as well as digital participation, and changes in socioeconomic gradients. We end by discussing what we might learn from our results about how social disruptions such as COVID-19 affect cultural participation.…”

“…Here, we do not find any consistent patterns of interaction terms between respondents' education/income and the dummy variables for each lockdown (and interim) period. These results imply that, unlike physical cultural participation, socioeconomic gradients in digital cultural participation did not change appreciably during the COVID-19 pandemic (Feder et al, 2022). Importantly, this result means that high-income or college-educated individuals did not substitute their lower physical cultural participation during lockdown with higher digital cultural participation.…”

“…Furthermore, it is an ideal case for studying if disruptions in the supply of cultural offerings caused a shift toward digital cultural participation, as suggested by the OECD (2020) and UNESCO (2021UNESCO ( , 2022. Feder et al (2022) report no clear changes in inequality in participation in out-of-home cultural participation in England. Codagnone et al (2021) find little change in cultural participation in Spain, the United Kingdom, and Italy compared to normal (i.e.…”

“…Although research documents pervasive socioeconomic gradients in cultural participation (Bennett et al, 2009; Bourdieu, 1984; Katz-Gerro, 2017; Lizardo, 2018), we do not know if the pandemic exacerbated these gradients. Feder et al (2022) report few changes in socioeconomic gradients as cultural participation moved online in England. RQ3 links the research note to a broader literature suggesting that COVID-19 (and related lockdowns) increased inequality in other domains, for example, income, education, and health (Betthäuser et al, 2023, Wachtler et al, 2020).…”

Cultural consumption and equality of access during economic downturns: The expenditure Gini coefficient for South Africa

“…The demand-side impact of the pandemic on cultural consumption is less well understood, and could have both positive and negative effects (Feder et al, 2023). The pandemic accelerated innovation and digitization in the creative economy, with many producers turning to online platforms to maintain business continuity despite the challenges.…”