Marine Faye

Hitomi Sekine


                                   Cultural Consumption in Japan

Multivariate analysis

To understand more about the Japanese people’s way of spending time on cultural activities and
answer our research question “‘How the spending on culture differs per income and sex?” from wider
perspective, we performed multivariate analysis.


The dependent variable – index– is coded as number from 0 to 7. Index means the numbers of point
people get from their cultural activities. For instance, we used four activities; karaoke, watching
movie at home, going to cinema, and flower arrangement. Then we categorized them into three groups;
pop cultural activities (karaoke and watching movie at home), high cultural activities (going to
cinema), and traditional high cultural activities (flower arrangement). If he/she does pop cultural
activities, he/she get 1 point per one activities, and 2 point for high cultural activities, 3
point for traditional high cultural activities. Therefore, minimum index is 0 (when he/she does not
do any activities) and maximum index is 7 (when he/she does all the four activities). Larger number
of index indicates greater tendency of high culture consumption.


The independent variables include annual income of the respondent (we categorized it into 16 income
level), and gender of the respondent (male, female). Add an interaction between gender and income!

The results are presented in table 1.


In model M1, the only independent variable is an income of a respondent. As table 1 shows, higher
income group tend to get high index. This result consistent with our hypothesis; 1 More people with
high pay jobs participate in high cultural activities which cost more money than people with low
pay jobs.


In next step, we considered sex in addition to income (model M2). If the respondent are female,
their index will increase 0.547. We can say that this number is significant. As we found in the
simple descriptive analysis in assignment 2, gender rather than social status determine. If social
status is not the determinant of the type of free time activities that they choose means that the
defense between men and women education in our society is relevant and appears in our results. In
the assignment, we concluded that since flower arrangement was traditionally considered as
preparation for married life, very few men practice flower arrangement among all income level
group. We can say that your culture in the first sense of the definition: “ideas, customs, and
social behavior from a particular group of people usually charring language and traditions in
common” can influence the kind of culture you will consume as it is in the 2^nd sense of culture
definition which refer to leisure (movie, music,art, ...) .

As the same as that conclusion, our second hypothesis social class determines what kind of culture
one would be interested in should be changed into gender rather than social status determines what
kind of culture one would be interested in.


We used only two independent variable, income and gender because of very limited data. However,
compared with M1 and M 2, R-squared rise from 0.0047 to 0.0210. It is not enough number, but we
think it shows that there is some improvement in terms of the quality of the respective models. OK




















Table 1: Determinants of index



M1

M2

Income

















Sex


Cons.

0 yen

~500,000 yen

~1,000,000 yen

~1,490,000 yen

~1,990,000 yen

~2,450,000 yen

~2,990,000 yen

~3,990,000 yen

~4,990,000 yen

~5,990,000 yen

~6,990,000 yen

~7,990,000 yen

~8,990,000 yen

~9,990,000 yen

~14,990,000 yen

15,000,000 yen~


Male

Female

Ref.

1.133

1.139

0.865

1.100

1.339

1.362

1.428

1.323

1.279

1.538

1.630

1.424

1.669

1.909

1.518




0.276

Ref.

1.160

1.074

0.834

1.218

1.521

1.653

1.809

1.774

1.761

2.026

2.124

1.917

2.170

2.412

2.019


Ref.

0.653

-0.230

N

R^2


66.564

0.0047

66.564

0.0210











Graph 1 shows the marginal effects of income on index of the respondent. NO

From this graph and above table, we can test our 2 hypotheses; 1 More people with high pay jobs
participate in high cultural activities which cost more money than people with low pay jobs. 2
Social class determines what kind of culture one would be interested in. As we mentioned above, our
first hypothesis is correct but second one is not correct. Not social class but gender determines
what kind of culture one would be interested in. Regarding our third hypothesis, the time you spend
on culture is determinate by the type of culture, dependent variable index cannot apply, and we
cannot test it in this analysis. OK, it was tested in descriptive analysis

The answer to main research question How the spending on culture differs according the status? Is:
people with high income tend to consume high culture but gender also affect what kind of culture
one would consume.

Perfect answer

Graph 1: How income influence index

The graph is really bad. It is a pity, because I adviced you via e-mail how to do it correct:

margins, at(income=(1(1)16))

or

margins, at(income=(1(1)16)), over(sex)

Performing margins over dependent variable is really big mistake and cost you 2 points. Please
correct it into a final paper!

I take one more point for model without interaction. I also specifically recommended you to add
interaction via e-mail. Again – do it into your final paper