UAE public participation in the musical arts

Abstract

Over the last decade the UAE has invested heavily in improving its traditional and contemporary cultural arts institutions, including music. However there has been little effort to understand the nature of public participation in the arts in the UAE. The aim of the present study is to explore attendance in live music performances. We adopt a binary probit and multivariate probit model to investigate the factors that influence attendance in general, and attendance in four specific genres of live music performances (Arabic, Indian, Western popular and European classical music). The data consist of 650 and 727 households from Abu Dhabi and Dubai respectively. The results show that ethnicity and residency, among other variables, affect participation in live performances. However key factors show varied effects on the four music genres underlining the importance of evaluating specific music genres. Consider, for example, ethnicity and length of residency. Relative to UAE nationals, other Arab groups are more likely to attend Arabic music, while belonging to Western group positively affects likelihood of attending Western pop and European classical music. However belonging to Asian group positively affects likelihood of attending Indian music, but it reduces the likelihood of attending Arabic and European classical music. Relative to a short stay of up to three years, longer residency shows a positive effect on the likelihood of attending Indian, Western pop and European classical music, but has no effect on Arabic music.