Cultural consumption

Research on cultural consumption is a flourishing field across different disciplines within the social sciences. It refers to the consumption of goods and services with primarily aesthetic functions and only secondarily instrumental uses. We present the main theoretical approaches, empirical methods, and results of research on the main dimensions of cultural consumption, the explanation of correlations between these dimensions and social positions, and the impact of cultural consumption on the reproduction of structures of resource inequalities in societies, focusing in particular on Bourdieu's foundational work. Future research should move beyond this approach by developing more precise concepts and more systematic mechanism-based theoretical explanations. We suggest an approach based on rational choice theory, because we deem it capable of overcoming the severe limitations of practice theories. Furthermore, we propose more rigorous methods for theory development and the establishment of causal claims, such as agent-based modeling, longitudinal analysis, and experimental methods