The Lure of the Multiplex? The Interplay of Time, Distance, and Cinema Attendance

Abstract

Models of cinema demand have tended to employ aggregate data and focus on price and income as key variables. Surprisingly, the effects of travel time and location have not been formally investigated. The authors do so, following developments in the environmental economics literature, by presenting estimates of individual travel cost models for multiplex and nonmultiplex cinemas. A key finding is that travel time has a significant negative effect on nonmultiplex cinema trips, but that this does not hold for multiplex trips; reasons for this are advanced. In the case of multiplex cinema trips, a range of phenomena relating to minimising time-cost uncertainty are shown to be significant. The authors also contribute to an explanation for the ‘overscreening’ phenomenon observed in the United Kingdom and the USA, which has led to the closure of some relatively recently built multiplexes.