A probabilistic model of the impact of cultural participation on social capital

ABSTRACT

This study attempts to construct a computer-based probabilistic model of the social impact of cultural events, which may be useful for simulating and measuring social impact in a community context. Changes in social capital as a result of actors’ participation in cultural events are modeled, assuming that links exist between cultural participation and social capital measured using the methodology of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The computer-based probabilistic model for simulation of the social impact of a cultural event flow is developed, and the model for a social impact assessment using statistical socio-cultural data is given. Finally, verification of the developed model is carried out by Monte Carlo-based computer-simulated case study, and the example of application to statistical cultural participation data is presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Social capital
• cultural processes
• logistic regression
• computer simulation
• statistical survey

Notes

¹ The mechanisms by which cultural events have a social impact should be counterfactually or probabilistically interpreted. It should be noted that these models are of direct relevance to causal inference, which also involves probabilistic and counterfactual claims (see Merrigan, Huston, & Johnston, 2012).

² Such events might be concerts, theater performances, visits to museums or exhibitions, festivals, sports events, and even specific events inherent to the community, organization, or group under consideration. Artworks and monuments exhibited in public spaces can also be studied from the point of their social impact.

³ It is noteworthy that cultural diffusion is distinguishable by sudden cultural spreads. In this case, the dynamically growing cultural processes can be modeled by non-stationary flows of dependent cultural events, where the growth in popularity of a certain set of events is modeled by a contact process or a voter model and the probabilities of preferences vary depending on actors’ neighborhood, social capital, and other variables (see Durrent & Jeffrey, 1993).

⁴ In a seminal paper, Axelrod (1997) explained the diversity of cultures as a consequence of the tendency to interact more frequently with more similar individuals. Thus, interesting studies can be conducted by modeling stationary and non-stationary flows of multicultural events when several communities co-exist in a single social-geographic space and each community generates event flows specific to its cultural field. Competition processes due to participation in these event flows can also be studied (Lanchier, 2012).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Lithuania [P-MIP-17-368].