The Role of Cultural Capital in Beer Consumption in Italy: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The beer industry has experienced progressive growth in recent years and, in the case of Italy, both production and consumption have reached unprecedented market figures in 2017. In fact, beer has increasingly become part of the consumption habits of Italians and is an integral part of the Mediterranean diet thanks to more evolved, responsible, informed, and quality-oriented consumption patterns. In this paper we empirically analyze the determinants of beer consumption in Italy, within an original conceptual framework in which, besides the traditional socio-economic antecedents, the possible role of individuals’ participation in cultural activities of various relational impact is taken into consideration. The results obtained through a probit model provide evidence that all the types of cultural consumption show a positive association with the probability for individuals to consume beer, but the magnitude of such a relationship is highest for the more socially oriented cultural activities (attending theaters, cinemas, music concerts, exhibitions, and archeological sites), followed by individual (newspapers and books reading) and highbrow (attendance of the opera and classical music concerts) ones.