Greeks seek less culture in crisis
New research shows that trips to theater, concerts have dipped in last years
The early results of a survey carried out by Greece’s National Center for Social Research (EKKE) and presented by the University of Athens yesterday indicated that the financial crisis has led Greeks to cut back on entertainment.
Greeks have reduced their cultural pursuits by an average of 15 percent, according to the EKKE survey.
“In some cases, the respon- dents said that they had not been to a single cultural or entertainment event for the last two years, which underlines the major change in the behavior of Greek consumers,” said Dimitris Emmanouil, who is the head of research at EKKE and was in charge of the survey, whose preliminary results were unveiled yesterday.
According to the research, 62 percent of respondents said that they had been to no or few music events over the last two years. Also, 78 percent said they hardly attended any dance shows or plays, while 40 percent were infrequent visitors to the cinema.
Despite the decline, Emmanouil said that the percentage of Greeks attending cultural events still compared favorably to some other countries, such as the UK, where nonparticipation rates can reach as high as 80 percent for some forms of culture.
On average there has been a 26 percent drop during the crisis in the frequency with which Greeks attend music shows. The regularity with which they go to theater or dance events has fallen by 14 percent.
“The biggest change in the attendance of cultural events was observed among unskilled workers or owners of small or medium-sized businesses, including store owners,” said Emmanouil.