Time allocation in a museum: an empirical investigation

Abstract

This paper examines the determinants that influence the time spent by visitors in a cultural site. This empirical investigation is based on survey data collected at the South Tyrol's Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano (Italy) between June and August 2010. Descriptive statistics show that, on average, visitors spend almost two hours, much longer than the length of stay in other museums as found in former empirical studies. Empirically, a zero-truncated Negative Binomial model has proved to achieve the best results. The analysis reveals that gender, age, income, group type, time spent at the destination, importance attributed to the museum and weather conditions have an impact on length of stay at this cultural site. These findings provide a useful tool to implement management directions about the museum.