ANALYSIS OF THEATER DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS AS A WELFARE ASSESSMENT OF THE REGION’S POPULATION
The study considers development indicators of theater business, among others, reflecting the population welfare of the Samara region and the Russian Federation as a whole. These include: theater attendance, the number of professional theaters, the number of theater audiences per 1,000 people, the share of consumer spending on cultural services, the share of theaters that have a website, the number of performances by prominent directors which are posted free of charge in the Internet, the share of theatrical events for children, the distribution of budgetary allocations for the development of theater, etc. The assessment of theater business in the Samara region from 2008 to 2017 allowed us to conclude that over 10 years the situation has changed a lot. If in 2008 the region took 35th place in theater attendance in the whole of the Russian Federation, then in 2017 it was already 20th in the Russian Federation and 6th among the regions of the Volga Federal District. Since 2014, this indicator is higher in the Samara region than the average for the Volga Federal District and closer to the average Russian level. The budgetary allocations under section 08 “Culture, Cinematography” for the main activities of the “Art” subprogram were analyzed: from 2016 to 2019, there was an increase in the cost of theater development, and the budget for 2019 was 1.6 times more. On the basis of statistical data, an economic and mathematical model has been built for the dependence of the theater attendance indicator on the income of the region’s population; the dependence and its nature are confirmed by the results of sociological surveys. Based on the results of the study, the authors proposed directions for the further development of theater in Russia and the Samara region.
Keywords: theater business, theater development indicators, theater attendance by the region’s population, theater development in the region, region’s population welfare, theater development financing, indicators of the cultural development program in the field of theater services.
Highlights:
the population welfare and the pace of socio-economic development of the region as a whole are evaluated considering the cultural component, which is represented, inter alia, by the level of development of theater business. The main theater development indicators in the region are theater attendance, the number of professional theaters, the number of municipal theaters equipped with modern equipment, the financing of theatrical development programs;
the dynamics of the theater development as a cultural component of the region’s population welfare showed that the Samara region took the 20th place among Russian regions and the 6th among the regions of the Volga Federal District in 2017, approaching the average Russian level. A sociological survey conducted as part of the study revealed a rather high satisfaction among the residents of the Samara region with the level of theater development in the region. Financing provided in the state budget indicators within the framework of theater development programs provides significant opportunities for further improvement of this sphere of human capital development;
the factor model constructed by the authors on the basis of statistical data proves a direct close relationship between the income level of the population and theater attendance, the dependence is confirmed by the results of sociological surveys, including the national level;
the measures proposed in the study for the further development of theatrical business in the Russian Federation and the Samara region (carrying out activities aimed at popularizing theatrical art, especially among adolescents and young people; expanding theatrical communities on social networks; more actively introducing modern information technologies into theaters, both at the stage of advertising performances, and in the process of registration of theatrical productions; the search for new modern genres of theatrical art, etc.) will allow using theaters as a cultural component of the regional development and integrating them into the tourism and leisure industry. This will help increase the investment attractiveness of the Samara region.
Svetlana V. Domnina, Doctor of Economics, Associate Professor, Professor of the Department of Land Management and Cadastres of Samara State University of Economics, Head of the Department of Management and Economics of Culture of Samara State Institute of Culture; Svetlana Yu, Salynina, Candidate of Economics, Associate Professor of the Department of Management and Economics of Culture of Samara State Institute of Culture.