The social life of taste

Given the social embeddedness of economic acts, cultural consumption remains an ongoing subject of sociological interest. By studying preferences and consumption both as a practice and as a decision, this dissertation aims to advance the understanding of cultural consumption and taste by exploring relatively uncharted areas of the social stratification of taste, the alternative meanings attached to cultural consumption, and the role of social influence in cultural markets. This cumulative dissertation comprises six empirical papers. The first study aims to bridge Bourdieu’s (1984) and Peterson’s (1992) views on social patterning of cultural taste, using survey data. It empirically shows how cultural omnivorousness systematically depends on patterns of educational mobility. Three groups with the highest omnivorousness are the upwardly and downwardly mobile groups between middle- and high-level positions, as well as those remaining in high-level positions, whereas immobile individuals in the lower segment show the most univorous tastes. The second study addresses a prior claim about the lack of geographical diversity in omnivore-univore studies by investigating the image of cultural omnivorousness in Ukraine. Building upon recent survey data, the findings support the distinctiveness of the omnivore class and indicate a more omnivorous taste amongst highly educated individuals, women, and residents of big cities. The third study examines the homology of omnivorous taste across three cultural domains, underlining differences between omnivorousness in the domains of music, film, and literature. The fourth study presents a case study of theater attendance in Ukraine in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war, providing supportive evidence for an upward trend in theater popularity using digital trace data and outlining new forms of the social significance of cultural consumption during periods of high uncertainty. The fifth and sixth studies of this dissertation employ vignette surveys on a student sample to study the influence of social information on moviegoers’ intentions, paying particular attention to nuances in the interplay between characteristics of cultural products (genres), the surrounding social information (valence of diverse ratings, recommendations), and the characteristics of consumers. In the fifth study, higher ratings by experts, users, and peers are found to be positive predictors, along with personal recommendations from close friends, holding high significance. However, the importance of ratings varies by genre, and certain effects are moderated by individual genre preferences, cultural omnivorousness, trust in friends, and the perceived importance of family. In the sixth study, the results show that recommendations from newly formed contacts who are women and extensively involved in movie watching carry greater value, with a certain degree of in-group favoritism identified among women. To sum up, this dissertation advances research on the omnivore-univore axis of cultural stratification, on the social and political significance of cultural consumption during periods of heightened uncertainty, and on the ways in which social information shapes decision-making in cultural markets.