Museums as Policy Tools: The Behavioral Impact of Cultural Experiences

Focused visit at a museum.

Our intervention consists of a focused museum visit (treatment) which will be compared with a standard museum visit (control). We individuated a specific museum in Siena called Santa Maria della Scala. Such a museum has a particular history as it was a destination for pilgrims who were making a pilgrimage through the "via Francigena". Many of the pilgrims stayed in Siena even after their pilgrimage and contributed to the well-being of the Santa Maria hospital (and of the city).

With the help of the museum guides, we designed two different tours of the former hospital. The first is the standard visit to the museum while the second will focus on the role of pilgrims. We believe that the treatment visit will present subjects with a positive example of integration that will make them re-evaluate our current situation.

2025-03-03

2025-05-17

1) Total donations to two NGOs (Italian Council for Refugees and Italian League for Birds Protection).
2) Specific donations to an NGO operating in the migration field (Italian Council for Refugees).

We incentivize students to take part in the visit by paying them 20 euros (in Amazon gift cards). After the visit to the museum, students will answer a few questions from a survey. In the first part of the survey, we will ask students how much they want to donate to two NGOs: one operating in the field of migration (Italian Council of Refugees) and one unrelated to migration (Italian League for Birds Protection).

1) Self-reported attitudes towards migrants according to the European Social Survey (Round 7).
2) Index on attitudes towards migrants.

In the second part of the survey (answered after the visits), we will ask students some questions from part B of the European Social Survey (Round 7). These questions are aimed to give us a self-reported assessment of students' attitudes towards migrants. Coherently with previous works in the literature (see attached pdf), we will also build an index on attitudes towards migration which is the standardized sum of each other measure. In particular, we will pick donations to ICR, and the answer to the six questions of the ESS.

Between subjects design, field experiment

Students will be recruited using HROOT from an active subject pool of the University of Siena.

We will incentivize students to go to the Santa Maria della Scala museum by paying them 20 euros (in Amazon gift cards) should they participate in the visit. Subjects will participate in a guided tour of Santa Maria della Scala museum in Siena. The tours will last approximately 30 to 45 minutes. Half of the tours will be control visits unrelated to themes of migration and hospitality: control subjects will visit the museum's isle dedicated to Fonte Gaia. The other half of the tour will focus on the frescoes in the Pilgrimage Hall of the museum. Such tours will focus on the previous role of the museum as a hospital helping people in need. This tour is designed to subtly highlight themes of hospitality and historical migration.

The tour will be performed by employees of the museum who are professional guides. They prepared the itinerary of both visits and they have been instructed to be neutral in the exposition during the tours. It is key that the connection between the themes of the visit in the treated group and immigration arise naturally in the minds of the students, without nudging from the guide.

After the visit, subjects will answer a final questionnaire. At the same time, we will ask subjects if they want to donate a fraction of the show-up fee. This is going to be the primary outcome we will measure to asses the impact of the treatment. Subsequently, subjects will complete part of the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 7 (i.e., B29 to B34). These self-reported measures will be used to investigate the effect of the treatment.

Randomization is done in the office before the tours.

Session level

No

1 University

The number of subjects will be determined by budget and student availability constraints. In any case, we plan to recruit not less than 164 subjects.

82 students allocated to the control visit;
82 students allocated to the treatment visit.

Two-sided t-test with effect size 0.3 (medium-low effect), alpha 0.05, and beta 0.8.

Analysis plan