Pier Luigi Sacco, Full Professor of Cultural Economics DADI - Department Art and Industrial Design, IUAV University, Venice, Italy
Enzo Grossi Medical Director Bracco Spa Milano, Italy
Renata Cerutti Biometrics unit Bracco SpA Milano, Italy
Giorgio Tavano Blessi Post- Doc Fellow, Adjoint Professor DADI - Department Art and Industrial Design, IUAV University, Venice, Italy; Adjoint Professor, Free University, Bozen

Abstract

Culture has become a particular investigated field in the relation with the development process of the western society. Investments in cultural infrastructures, activities and cultural policies provide benefits at social and economic levels, representing one of the main tools dealing with renovation policies for cities. The definition of a development strategy focused on cultural assets is seen as a priority and as a fast way to increase the value of the urban and regional areas since those have impacts on all the social actors.
The research will focus the attention on the relations between culture and individual well-being, in order to provide a possible estimation of the impact of the culture participation on the subjective perception of the quality of life of Italian population.
The abstract is divided in three parts: in the first will be present a literature review about well-being, individual well-being and culture. Successively will be describing the methodology adopted, the instrument and the survey. In the third one will be presents some results of a survey undertaken on a representative sample of the Italian population.

Theoretical Approach and Research Objective

The research aims to question if participation to and consumption of culture can be associated with individual’s health (well-being) in some ways. The idea start from evidences that substantially longer active life expectancy among individuals can be explained not only from socio-demographic features, but also by difference in leisure and participation/consumption of specific forms of cultural supply. In this respect, previous epidemiological studies substantiate the idea of a strong link between cultural participation and e.g. survive, in the way that participation to cultural activities and consumption of cultural goods can be linked to the social capital. Social capital refers to the capacity of individuals and to their ability to secure benefits through memberships in networks and other social structures. Culture can be seen as a tool that promotes cohesion through the creation of a common language thus setting the stage for socially-driven development of human potential (Matarasso, 1997), the creation and/or regeneration of the social fabric, the generation of systematic opportunities for social networking, and more generally the optimal management of accumulation processes for other key intangible assets such as social capital (Bourdieu, 1983), with consequential benefits in terms of social order and cohesion (Everingham, 2003).
In this perspective, participation to cultural activities and consumption of cultural goods set the stage for the establishment of some outcomes - which can be defined ‘relational goods’ – fundamental premises in order to enhance the goals previously described: tangible and intangible forms of cultural capital, participation to and consumption of various forms of cultural capital, represents an occasion for socializing building and the creation of networking activities, to build a strong connection between individuals and groups in a non-instrumental way, indeed providing benefits such as increasing level of well being and happiness in the participants and thus in communities. As Gui highlights (Gui, 1994) ‘relational goods cannot be produced, consumed or acquired by single individuals because they depend on the interaction with others and are enjoyed only if shared with others’. Furthermore, Gui defines relational goods as ‘intangible capital assets that inhere in enduring interpersonal relationships and provide both intrinsic and instrumental benefits. They are local public goods that are formed or maintained through non-contractible, co-ordinate actions’.
The theoretical approach previously described, suggested investigating the relation between the cultural dimension and individuals, suggested to investigate the possible correlation between culture and individual well-being. Although the relevance of culture in everyday life of the society, few studies focused the relation between culture and health and well-being have been realized, the few are focused on leisure participation and survival. In addition, no previous research was based on survey having a statistical representation of the whole population of a country.

Subjects and Methods

This Cross-sectional survey to assess the quality and quantity of cultural consumption and its relation with psychological well being has been carried out in a representative sample (n=3000) of community-dwelling Italians with the assistance of Doxa organization (Italy).
Information collected through questionnaires and interviews covered socio-demographic and health-related data well known as wellbeing determinants: Geography, Urban/rural environment, Gender, Age, Schooling, Civil status, Income level, Diseases presence. In addition 15 different variables has been selected after a revision of the main literature in the cultural field to assess “cultural consumption” assessment. (Table 1).

Table 1:  cultural activities considered in the survey

Jazz music concerts                
Classic music concerts                           
Opera/ ballet          
Theatre                                            
Museums                                                  
Rock concerts                                          
Disco dance
Paintings exhibition
Social activity
Waching sport
Sport practice
Book reading
Poetry reading
Cinema
Local community development

Psychological General Well Being Index (PGWBI)
The subjective psychological well being has been measured through a long standing validated instrument: The Psychological General Well Being Index (PGWBI)
The Psychological General Well-Being Index (PGWBI), developed for the purpose of providing an index that could be used to measure self-representations of intrapersonal affective or emotional states reflecting a sense of subjective well-being or distress, measures the subjective perception of wellbeing. The original PGWBI consists of 22 self-administered items, rated on a 6-point scale, which assess psychological and general well-being of respondents in six HRQoL domains: anxiety, depressed mood, positive well-being, self-control, general health and vitality . Each item has six possible answers scores (from 0 to 5) referred to the last four weeks. Each domain is defined by a minimum of 3 or a maximum of 5 items. The scores for all domains can be summarized to provide a summary score, which reaches a maximum of 110 points, representing the best achievable “well being”.
In this survey we have adopted the short form of PGWBI, consisting in six items explaining more than 93% of global variance of the questionnaire. The PGWBI has been adopted for two previous waves of research about well-being of Italian population (2000 and 2004). This short version has been validated in a broad project carried out from 2000 to 2006 in Italy. ( Grossi et al, 2006)
           
Data analysis

Univariate analysis has been carried out on the PGWBI mean values according to different degree of cultural consumption. Means have been compared with unpaired T test.
Multivariate analysis has been carried out with supervised artificial neural networks, according to method previously described.
After this processing, the features that were most significant for the classification were selected and at the same time the training set and the testing set were created with a function of probability distribution similar to the one that provided the best results in the classification. A supervised Multi Layer Perceptron, with four hidden units, was then used for the classification task.

Results

Univariate analysis
Univariate analysis showed that major determinants of PWGBI score resulted as expected: diseases (PGWBI decreases as N° disease increase); income (PGWBI increases as income increases; age (PGWBI decreases as age increases); schooling (PGWBI increases as schooling years increase); job (PGWBI of white collar better than blue collar) and geography (PGWBI of northern people better than southern people).
Univariate analysis showed that with most cultural variables, the degree of consumption is highly correlated with psychological wellbeing.
Artificial neural networks analysis
Multivariate analysis carried out with supervised neural networks shows that 6 cultural variables take part of   the subset of 35 variables autonomously selected by TWIST system ( Semeion) to build up an optimal predictive modeling of PGWBI class. It is interesting and quite surprising to see that according to input relevance in the model these 6 cultural variables occupy the first 10 places.


Conclusions

Evidence shown that for specific forms of cultural consumption affect individual well-being for the population and the beneficial effect emphasizes the significance of cultural participation/consumption for the promotion of men’s health. The point of strength of this study are the sample size, the methodological criteria used for sample stratification, the soundness of wellbeing measuring instrument and the potency of analysis methods, based on artificial neural networks.
The results show beyond any doubt that specific forms of culture supply are associated with higher levels of well being in Italian general population. This forms are those more related to the consumption of culture in social contexts, validating the idea that culture produce ‘relation goods’ and those affect structurally the social well-being. The use of artificial neural networks, which can build up predictive model very complex, taking into account the interaction among variables, show that the contribution of the cultural consumption is net and not simply related to other well known determinants of subjective wellbeing, like instruction level, income, or age. Further studies will have to focus prospectively if investing in cultural supply is able to change the wellbeing status of the population.

References

Bourdieu,  P. 1983, La Distinzione, Il Mulino, Bologna.

Everingham, C. 2003. Social Justice and the Politics of Community, Ashgate, London.

Grossi E, Groth N, Mosconi P, Cerutti R, Pace F, Compare A, Apolone G.  2006,
Development and validation of the short version of the Psychological General Well-Being Index (PGWB-S). Health Qual Life Outcomes, 4(1):88- 96

Gui, B., 1994 On “relational goods”: strategic implications of investment in relationships, Journal: International Journal of Social Economics, 23, 10/11, pp 260 – 278.

Matarasso, F. 1997, Use or Ornament: The Social Impact of  Participation in the Arts, Comedia, Stroud.