Addictive behavior in cinema demand: evidence from Korea

Abstract

It is intuitively plausible that the demand for cinema services may be partly driven by addiction or habit. Yet there is almost no empirical literature which tests for whether cinema demand is addictive. We estimate addiction models for cinema demand using Korean time series data from 1963 to 2004. Our estimation results indicate that (i) addictive behavior characterizes the demand for cinema services, (ii) this behavior is rational, and (iii) habit is one of most important determinants of cinema demand. Our results also reveal that cinema attendance is generally insensitive to admission price and unrelated to income.Cinema demand, rational addiction, myopic addiction, two-stages least squares, time-series analysis