Museums as Policy Tools: The Behavioral Impact of Cultural Experiences

Abstract

Museums can serve as policy tools when their content is purposefully curated. We designed a framed field experiment at the Santa Maria della Scala museum in Siena that leveraged the site's historical role offering care and hospitality.Student visitors randomly assigned to a tour emphasizing this function later donated more to an NGO supporting refugee than those who followed a standard artistic itinerary, with effects concentrated among female participants. These results show that thematically targeted museum experiences can measurably boost charitable behavior toward vulnerable groups, underscoring the untapped potential of cultural institutions in behavioral public policy.