An Analysis of Demand Determining Factors in Cinema: A Case Study, Cinema in Zanjan

Arts can be counted as a base for evolution of culture that causes the growth and flowering of society and its people. The observations indicate that the artistic and cultural activities can have a considerable contribution to the economy. Comparing with other artistic and cultural productions, Cinema with its special characteristics can play an important role in economics of arts. During two recent decades, Iran’s cinema has been experiencing a depression for several reasons, some of which could be economic ones. So if we want to give rise to this industry, one of the important sides of economics of cinema which is its demand side needs to be investigated.
For this purpose, after extracting different demand determining factors by reviewing the literature, a questionnaire was designed in order to evaluate the relationship between these factors and the people’s cinema going behavior in Zajan. The research sample contains of 505 people.
The results indicate that 318 people of 505 people (about 63% of the whole) have gone to cinema at least one time in the last year. Among different economic and socio-demographic factors only some factors had a significant relationship with cinema demand. These factors are personal income, gender and marital status. Also, it becomes obvious that the majority of people in the sample prefer cinema as an entertainment in average and would rather watching domestic videos than going to cinema.