Modelling the satisfaction and identifying the typical profiles of the Scrovegni Chapel visitors

In order to understand the individual’s willingness to consume cultural goods, we must assign them an economic value. However, it is difficult to accept the “economic willingness to pay” measure for a couple of reasons. First, because individuals do not possess complete information with which to define the monetary value of a cultural good and, second, because they may find it difficult to assign an economic value to particular items of the cultural good. However, the goods concerned may be ‘priceless’, or the consumer may find it difficult to order preferences and thus to define the value of the cultural good. As well as these difficulties, there are other value categories that can define any cultural good: aesthetic, spiritual, social or symbolic value (Throsby, 2001). This means that individuals may assign very different values to cultural goods because they are created by very different needs and motivational perspectives. In this analysis, art is not considered an optional activity but as an output of the human biological activity through which individuals learn to communicate via an emotional experience (Argenton, 1996). We assume that psychology and consumption are intertwined since both affect motivations and expectations (Grandinetti and Moretti, 2004). It is difficult to detect their relationship because often this stays veiled, even to the consumer himself. We analyzed the cultural visit from a complex viewpoint, to take into account all the dimensions involved in the aesthetic experience, i.e. cognitive, affective and somatic-emotional. In this study, our aim is both to detect those motivations and expectations that played a significative role on modeling the visitors’ satisfaction and to outline the profiles of typical customers of the Scrovegni Chapel.