What are the arts, culture and sport worth?

Covid has had a significant impact on arts, culture and sport in the UK, with theatres, cinemas, museums, gyms and swimming pools, for example, seeing closures in 2020-21. These activities are important for people’s wellbeing, and we wanted to know if it was possible to put a monetary value on the subjective wellbeing benefits that people get from arts, culture and sport.

These activities need public funding even in ‘normal’ times, because the cost of maintaining a historical site, for example, can be higher than the revenue it generates. Arts Council funding for 2018-22 was £1.6 billion, and funding for sport from 2017-21 was £1bn. The government has also provided £2bn of Culture Recovery Fund loans to help organisations bounce back from the pandemic.

It’s difficult to put an economic value on these activities – and some would argue that their social and cultural value is a public good which can’t be priced – but if we were able to put a figure on the arts, culture and sport, that could be used to inform funding in the future.

Putting a price on wellbeing

We worked out our figures using wellbeing data from waves 2 (2010-11) and 5 (2013-14) of Understanding Society, using a method known as life satisfaction valuation (or sometimes happiness valuation). This looks at the amount of money which would be required to give someone the same level of wellbeing they currently have if something changed – for example, if a local arts venue closed or wasn’t there any more.

We used the answers to questions about whether and how often people took part in

arts activities such as dancing, playing musical instruments, and painting
arts events such as cinema, concerts, and theatre
visiting libraries, archives, museums, and historical sites
moderate-intensity sports such as swimming, football, or golf
mild-intensity sports, such as bowling, rambling, and yoga.

We considered people’s answers on a 1-7 scale on their:

overall life satisfaction
satisfaction with the amount of leisure time they have
satisfaction with health
job satisfaction.

Our findings

To begin with, we found that taking part in arts, culture and sport is indeed good for our subjective wellbeing. Arts activities and events have positive links with life and leisure satisfaction. Arts events are linked to satisfaction with health, and arts activities to job satisfaction. Visiting museums more frequently is linked to higher life and leisure satisfaction, and visiting historical sites is linked to greater reported wellbeing in all areas but job satisfaction. Moderate and mild intensity sport has positive links to all forms of wellbeing. There were some signs of using libraries and archives being negatively linked to wellbeing, but these were not statistically significant.

Overall, the activities which we found to be statistically significant were the ones that required more active involvement and had the benefit of social interaction.

When it came to valuation, arts events and sport had significant benefits for wellbeing across all the measures of satisfaction. We estimated that arts events were worth £2,667 in life satisfaction per person per year, with moderate-intensity sport worth £2,133.

Visiting museums had a value of £2,317 in terms of life satisfaction, and £1,056 in leisure satisfaction – findings which are in line with existing research. Visiting historical sites was worth £971 in life satisfaction, £2,714 in leisure satisfaction, and £2,273 in satisfaction with health – although, using a different statistical method, the results weren’t statistically significant, which casts some doubt on the robustness of these particular valuations.

We also calculated that more active arts activities and sport deliver wellbeing benefits to leisure time of around £1,944, while taking part in sport is associated with wellbeing benefits to health of £3,200 (moderate sports) and £1,700 (mild sports). There were not as many benefits in terms of job satisfaction, but we did find some evidence of positive spill-over from arts events and moderate sport, perhaps reflecting the benefits of social interaction (although not confirmed by our analysis). In this category, the benefit of moderate sports was worth £1,333 in terms of job satisfaction.

Social interaction is important

Some of the largest benefits from arts, culture and sport are in leisure satisfaction, which is what we’d expect. These are things we do in our leisure time, which is also why we see lesser benefits in job satisfaction.

Arts events, visiting museums and historical sites, and moderate and mild intensity sports are important for life satisfaction, too. The links aren’t as clear with health satisfaction, although the values are high in this area for more active involvement in sport. This might be a reflection of the benefits of a healthy active lifestyle, but it could also be that people who are less able or healthy can’t access these activities and thus derive the benefits from them.

The activities which have higher values are the ones which involve other people, underlining the importance of social interaction in the benefits we get. This is also why they’re important things to support as society recovers from the pandemic.

Future funding

The results we have found show the importance of funding the arts, culture, heritage and sport. It’s understandable that governments want to wind down pandemic funding, but we have shown how important this funding is for recovery.

It’s important to point out, as well, that people who take part in these activities are, by definition, much more likely to be those who are able to. People with higher incomes and social status, for example, may be more likely to engage in these activities, and enjoy the wellbeing benefits. This underlines the importance of funding arts, culture and sport in ways which widen accessibility, so that others can benefit, too.

We hope that future waves of Understanding Society will ask the same questions about arts, culture and sporting activities, to allow for future research in this area.

Read the original paper