Graphical models for complex networks: an application to Italian museums

ABSTRACT

This paper applies probabilistic graphical models in a new framework to study association rules driven by consumer choices in a network of Italian museums. The network consists of the museums participating in the programme of Abbonamento Musei Torino Piemonte, which is a yearly subscription managed by Associazione Torino Città Capitale Europea. It is available to people living in the Piemonte region, Italy. Consumers are card-holders, who are allowed entry to all the museums in the network for one year. We employ graphical models to highlight associations between the museums driven by card-holder visiting behaviour. We use both simple undirected graphs and more complex directed graphs, and we do not make any hypothesis on the models but rather learn their structures directly from the data. We also use methodologies and tools for robust network identification and principal component analysis to complete the analysis of the phenomenon.

KEYWORDS:

• Graphical models
• directed graphs
• undirected graphs
• network
• consumer behaviour

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions. In particular the last paragraph of Section 4 and the idea to make a future research to improve the model taking into account distances between museums and time of visit have been suggested by the referees. The authors also thank Francesca Leon, past president of the Associazione Torino Città Capitale and currently council member of culture of the city of Turin, for providing the database of AMTP card-holders.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 www.abbonamentomusei.it/pages/Abbonamento_Musei

2 G. Brondino, C. Coscia, F. Leon, and M. Vycpalek, Visito ergo sum: a behaviour-oriented segmentation for Italian Museum Visitors. The frame of card-holders of Abbonamento Musei Torino Piemonte, presented at the III Annual Conference of ENCATC, London 12-15 September, 2012.