The ICT strategy of Italian museums: institutional, supply and demand side drivers

It is common wisdom that the diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT) in cultural institutions can influence their mission and activities, reshaping their role as producers and distributors of cultural content. Nevertheless, the extent of ICT facilities in European museums has been rather scarce, although recently it has grown faster in response to the new challenges brought up by the COVID-19 crisis. This paper aims at exploring the drivers of the ICT strategy adopted by museums and similar institutions (in terms of both in situ and online services), considering not only supply-side but also demand-side characteristics. To the best of our knowledge, such an issue has not been investigated so far in a systematic way. We use a novel dataset based on three waves (2011, 2015, 2018) of a census survey carried out by the Italian National Statistical Office on all the cultural institutes spread over the Italian territory. Results show that supply-side, demand-side and contextual factors are significantly associated with the use of ICT by museums and similar institutions. Interestingly, we find that the relationship between demand features and museums’ digital strategy is closely related to the type of services and to the presence of financial incentives.