Mobilizing personal networks into concert audiences: The differential multilevel effects in an art convention

As a specific art convention, graduating music students in college often invite network members to attend their degree recitals. This customary practice of network mobilization involves two types of tie effects that seemingly conflicted with each other, which became more acute when the practice abruptly changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on invitation and attendance records collected from seventy-one recitals in a span of two decades before (N = 4866) and during the pandemic (N = 428) in Taiwan, multilevel analysis helped untangle which concert and tie features contributed to successful invitations at both the recital and invitation levels. Recruiting a larger proportion of weak ties helped boost the overall attendance at the recital level, while strong ties ensured positive responses to individual invitations in terms of both meeting at the recital hall and recalling the recital, particularly before the pandemic. More importantly, certain cross-level effects changed during the pandemic while others remained intact.