Psychological determinants of non-attendees’ resistance toward performing arts

Although enlarging the audience base for the performing arts is necessary, little effort has been made to understand non-attendees in this industry. The current study focuses on non-attendees and aims to answer the following questions: (1) Why are non-attendees reluctant to attend the performing arts? (2) Whom, among them, should be targeted to be converted into attendees? To understand the reasons for non-attendance, we examined psychological factors (i.e., usage, risk and image barriers, and self-image congruence) as determinants of resistance. A survey of 672 non-attendees was conducted and a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) analysis was applied to investigate the mechanism by which psychological factors formulate resistance and attendance intention. We also conducted a clustering analysis to detect heterogeneous sub-groups among non-attendees and suggested a target segment with the highest market potential. The findings of this study provide insights for the performing arts industry to create communication strategies specifically for non-attendees.