Examining the Variety of Contexts for Creativity

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how audiences choose between different theatre performances and how they try to evaluate the quality. Especially the impact of professional reviews is analyzed. The audience may use different quality indicators to evaluate the quality beforehand. These quality indicators can be either objective facts (such as the manuscript (title and author), the director or the actors) or subjective quality indicators such as professional review (e.g. in newspapers) or friends and relatives evaluations (word-­‐of-­‐mouth mechanisms). The paper will answer the research questions based on econometric analysis using a unique dataset from the Royal Danish National Theatre (offering theatre, opera and ballet) during the period 2004/05 to 2013/14, where data has been systematically collected. The paper will provide new and original research about the importance of mediators (professional reviewers) compared to word-­‐of mouth mechanism on demand for theatre performances.