Anatomy of a Literature Review

Brief review of literature employing rational addiction model cont'd

Having reviewed studies that apply the rational addiction model to explain the consumption of goods like drugs and alcohol, Castiglione and Infante cite a few studies that apply the model to the consumption of cultural goods "such as the cinema."

Given that cinema (i.e., movie theater) attendance seems more comparable to theater (i.e., plays, opera, etc.) attendance than does drug use, it is clear that Castiglione and Infante structure this mini literature review as an upside-down pyramid.

While some studies (e.g., Bonato et al. [1990] and Levy-Garboua and Montmarquette [1996]) come close, our authors argue that no one has yet applied the rational addiction model to explain the consumption of Italian theater.

On the one hand, no one studying Italian theater attendance has yet employed the rational addiction model and, on the other, no one working with the rational addiction model has yet applied it to the problem of Italian theater attendance.

In short, Castiglione and Infante position their study as the bottom-most tip that unites these two upside-down pyramids of scholarship.

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