Time allocation in a museum: an empirical investigation

This paper examines the determinants that influence the time spent by visitors in a cultural site. This
empirical investigation is based on survey data collected at the South Tyrol's Museum of
Archaeology in Bolzano (Italy) between June and August 2010. Descriptive statistics show that, on
average, visitors spend almost two hours, much longer than the length of stay in other museums as
found in former empirical studies. Empirically, a zero -truncated Negative Binomial model has proved
to achieve the best results. The analysis reveals that gender, age, income, group type, time spent at
the destination, importance attributed to the museum and weather conditions have an impact on
length of stay at this cultural site. These findings provide a useful tool to implement management
directions about the museum.