Intra-audience effect: A quantitative exploration of the predictors and outcomes of the social experience of live and digital concerts

The focus of this thesis is the social experience of Western art music concerts. Previous research has identified social bonding as one of the primary functions of music, and social interaction is often found to be at the heart of music consumption. However, prior to this work, there was no psychometrically validated method of capturing the social experience in a quantitative way; therefore, the first objective in this thesis was to develop and validate such a tool.

Subsequently this tool was used to explore the social experience of various live concerts in the North of England, and in Berlin, and it was found that the social experience of a concert influences the overall enjoyment of the event, but not specific emotional responses to the musical stimuli. Following the proliferation of digital presentations of music, which burgeoned during the COVID-19 pandemic, we sought to compare the social experience of live and digital concerts, and to explore whether a social experience can be facilitated or enhanced by manipulating certain parameters of the digital mode. The results indicate that while participants perceive a live concert to be more social, it is possible to amplify the social experience of digital concerts through mechanisms such as facilitating interaction between participants. In addition, we found that participants’ expectations of the concert moderated the extent to which they rated the experience as social, and that those who reported having a more social experience also experienced an increase in positive mood.

To further develop these results, in a third study, we looked at whether other interindividual characteristics predict the extent to which participants have a social experience at Western art music concerts and found that trait extraversion and agreeableness were significantly influential. This was based on data collected in response to a virtual reality presentation of the same stimuli as the second study. Since there is little previous research on this topic, we also explored participants’ experience of the presentation of a concert in this way using a more pragmatic, mixed methods approach, combining both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis.

Overall, the findings in this thesis contribute to the understanding of the social experience of the consumption of Western art music in various settings, including the factors that can predict the collective experience, and how it subsequently influences participants’ engagement, enjoyment, and responses to concerts in various presentations.