The busking experiment: A field study measuring behavioral responses to street music performances.

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted with a professional busker in the London Underground over the course of 24 days. Its aim was to investigate the extent to which performative aspects influence behavioural responses to music street performances. Two aspects of the performance were manipulated: familiarity of the music (familiar vs. unfamiliar) and body movements (expressive vs. restricted). The amount of money donated and number of people who donated were recorded. A total of 278 people donated over the experiment. The music stimuli, which was selected in an online study to differ only in familiarity, had been previously recorded by the busker. During the experimental sessions, the busker lip-synced to the pre-recorded recordings. Thus, the audio input in the experiment remained identical across sessions and the only variables that changed across conditions were the familiarity of the music and the expressivity of performed body movements. The results indicated that neither music familiarity nor performer's body movements had a significant impact on the amount of money donated (Rm 2 = .033) nor the number of donors (Rm 2 = .023). These results do not support previous literature on the influence of familiarity and performers' body movements, typically conducted in lab and artificial environments. The findings are further discussed with regard to potential extraneous variables that are crucial to control for (i.e., location of the performance, physical appearance, the bandwagon effect) and the advantages of field versus laboratory experiments.A novel research framework to study music judgements and behaviour is introduced, namely, the behavioural economics of music.

Aesthetic and physiological effects of naturalistic multimodal music listening

“…For example, previous lab studies have demonstrated that body movement (Platz & Kopiez, 2012) and familiarity (see North & Hargreaves, 2010) increase appreciation of music; though the latter component has an inverted U-relationship. However, these findings were not replicated in a field study that was conducted in a more realistic situation (busking) and using a more realistic dependent variable of appreciation (i.e., money rather than ratings, Anglada-Tort et al, 2019). Thus, despite the fact that a naturalistic setting might allow less control, together with results from previous work (Coutinho & Scherer, 2017), we provide consistent support that audiovisual information enhances AE; a finding that is likely generalisable to more naturalistic human behaviour.…”

“…Although these two studies highlight the difference between genres and the affordances that visual information can give (focus on seeing other audience members/musicians in popular/classical music, respectively), they essentially show that additional information enhances the (social/emotional) experience. We stress that it is not trivial to replicate findings from the lab to a more naturalistic setting, since, for example, well documented effects of familiarity and body movement on music appreciation found from lab studies were not replicated in a field study (Anglada-Tort et al, 2019). It is also worth extending Coutinho & Scherer (2017), since they focus on the more emotional part of AE, and only collected data from an AV modality in a naturalistic setting (other modalities were tested in a lab-like setting).…”

Virtual gifting behavior on new social media: the perspectives of the community gift-giving model and face-negotiation theory

“…Our findings regarding impulse buying behavior reflect the similarity between live video streaming and street performing. Audiences in both settings spend money on the spot rather than paying in advance and are free to decide when and how much they pay (Anglada-Tort et al ., 2019; Kushner and Brooks, 2000). Therefore, a possible explanation for the lack of support for H3a is that consumers might evaluate the broadcaster's image via long-term observations instead of a one-off judgment to buy virtual gifts impulsively.…”

Assessing real-world music listening in concerts

“…For example, previous laboratory studies have demonstrated that body movement (Platz & Kopiez, 2012) and familiarity (see North & Hargreaves, 2010) increase appreciation of music, even though the latter component has an inverted U-relationship. However, these findings were not replicated in a field study that was conducted in a more realistic situation (busking) and using a dependent variable of appreciation (i.e., money rather than ratings, Anglada-Tort et al, 2019), suggesting that components of music performance influence music appreciation differently depending on the context. Overall, despite the fact that a naturalistic setting might allow less control, together with results from previous work (Coutinho & Scherer, 2017b), we provide consistent support that audio-visual information enhances AE;…”

“…Although these two studies highlight the difference between genres and the affordances that visual information can give (focus on seeing other audience members/musicians in popular/classical music, respectively), they essentially show that additional information enhances the (social/emotional) experience. We stress that it is not trivial to replicate findings from the lab to a more naturalistic setting, since, for example, well documented effects of familiarity and body movement on music appreciation found from lab studies were not replicated in a field study (Anglada-Tort et al, 2019). It is also worth extending Coutinho & Scherer (2017b), since they focus on the more emotional part of AE, and only collected data from an AV modality in a naturalistic setting (other modalities were tested in a lab-like setting).…”