https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4818-932X
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Abstract
This work aims to evaluate cultural policies, specifically in the dance sector, an area which has received scant attention in economic literature so far. Data Envelopment Analysis is applied to evaluate public program performance and the stakeholders involved therein. We select a Spanish public policy supporting dance as case study, which includes public authorities, theaters and dance companies. The former provide the funding while the others offer the artistic idea that is taken to the audience. We find that efficiency in resource performance often runs counter to other cultural aims such as increasing audiences or extending repertoire diversity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 See the Danza a Escena (www.danzaaescena.es) program for further details concerning the requirements and benefits of participating in the program.
2 No correspondence was established with the objective of stylistic diversity for dance companies since, in practice, entities taking part in the program only do so with one annual work. The aim of achieving variety in the offer is left to theaters, who can hire at least more than three different shows. As a result, this at least provides an incentive in terms of plurality of styles.
3 To standardize data on funding, net amounts have been taken, excluding the effect of taxes. As regards available capacity, this has been calculated as the number of seats at the venue multiplied by the number of performances scheduled.
4 Genres have been differentiated as follows: contemporary dance, neoclassical dance, Spanish dance (flamenco and contemporary Spanish dance), children’s dance (for children, the family and all audiences), new formats of dance (urban dance, circus dance, vertical dance, avant-garde proximity shows, physical theater and techno-dance), and small format shows (solos and short pieces).
5 We do not use more sophisticated models such as Network-DEA as in Del Barrio-Tellado, Herrero-Prieto, and Murray (Citation2020) in which the production process is divided into different stages that are more or less controlled by the manager. This is because our purpose is not to measure the efficiency of these agents in the market, but rather to analyse how they optimize their behavior when fulfilling the goals established in the cultural policy. For this reason, nor do we apply DEA models with a two-stage approach to test the effect of external factors, since our aim is to measure the efficiency of the public program itself.
6 The selection process is indeed quite selective. For instance, in the last year analysed, 353 proposals were presented, although only 30 dance companies were chosen to form part of the catalogue of shows.
7 This dual behavior concerning repertoire styles is also found in the programming of Warsaw theaters, as shown in Wisniewska and Czajkowski (Citation2019).