Environmental factors affecting classical music concert experience

Abstract

Based on an online survey, this study investigated the effect of various factors, including those related to performance, acoustic condition, visual condition, price, comfort, architectural design, and social aspects, on participants’ selection of concert, seat, and their experience of attending classical concerts. From 153 valid responses, it was found that the most important factors were related to performance, acoustics, and view; but price, comfort, and social factors were also moderately important. Performance and acoustic factors, comfort and view, social aspects, and architectural design were closely linked in participants’ judgments. More frequent concert-goers focused more on the music itself, including performance and acoustics, whereas less frequent concert-goers cared more for the experience of going to a concert, and were more concerned with price, social aspects, view, and architecture. People who were professional musicians, or had backgrounds in acoustics or architecture, attached more importance to visual factors and acoustics. Differences between groups of participants were generally smaller than differences between attributes.

Finding the Seat With the Best View: Stage-View Preference for Orchestra

“…To verify the results with a larger sample size, a relevant question was included in an online survey about people’s preferences in concert attending (Y. Chen & Cabrera, 2022).…”

“…This study and the summarized previous studies in this paper are focused on the auditory, visual, or audio-visual conditions in auditoria. In practical situations, there are other factors not related to vision and hearing that might influence people’s seat preference or seat selection, including but not limited to economic, ergonomic, and cultural factors, such as the comfort of the seat and the environment (Giannis et al, 2016; Kavgic et al, 2008), ease of access to the seat (Vaupel, 1998), social status of the audience members (Williamson, 2009), or professional background of the audience members (Y. Chen & Cabrera, 2022; Galiana, et al,2016).…”

Good View or Good Acoustics? Can I Have Both?

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Apart from the acoustics, the visual scene in a concert hall also plays an important role in an audience's concert-attending experience, and the view of the stage is a key component of the visual scene. Visual preference contributes to the overall preference of the performance environment and experience [1][2][3][4][5][6] ; and visual and auditory preference also interact with and enhance each other [7][8][9][10] . In addition, some of the factors that influence auditory and visual preference are correlated.

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