Sharing the pi: are incentives an effective method of attracting a more diverse science festival audience?

Abstract

Science festivals are seen as a success story for public engagement with science, with numbers rapidly growing. However, research has shown that attendees at such events tend to be more affluent, better-educated and more interested in science than populations at large. This has led to calls for research into how festivals can widen participation beyond the already engaged. This paper details the efforts of one festival to attract a more diverse audience through the use of a targeted ‘Community Pass’, offering attendees a free lunch, as well as by undertaking analysis of the characteristics that made individuals more likely to attend. The research shows that such a scheme can attract a very different audience to visit, albeit on a small scale due to cost implications. Working with existing community groups was shown to be the most effective method of distributing the passes, with recipients valuing a personal interaction with the distributor. There is also some suggestion that the incentive might nudge audiences who had a ‘fragile’ intention to attend the festival into actually visiting. However, more research is needed into whether larger-scale measures, such as employing community outreach officers, could have a more significant effect on overall attendance profiles.