I understand the general theme of your post and indeed can see why you think its "conjecture".....at the end of the day unless its fact there will always be differing ideas.
All I was trying to point out was that gates are down this season against last.....despite us being in a higher position. we've been up around the top 10 for a while now, but to only have 4361 home fans on New Years day is disappointing i'm sure you will agree.
You say about the fact we weren't always up the top end of the division yet earlier in the season we attracted 4888 against Crawley and over 4700 against Salford.
Last season we had back to back fixtures over Christmas, against arguably more attractive opposition and there were 4918 home fans v Swindon and 5514 v MK three days later, so I don't get the "moneys tight" analogy either as people will come out...as shown in those figures.
Last year 10432 home fans for the two games, this year 9084 for the two games.....that's nearly 13% fewer in total despite us being on the edge of a promotion race this season, last season we were in 14th place going into those games.
The average home fans figure for last season at this stage was 4594, and at the end of the season that had fallen to 4549. This season as it stands the average is 4532.
Maybe its just me.......if we were playing decent football and were 7th in the table I believe those figures would be nearer 5000. I'm not saying the results would be any better, just the performances on the pitch. You only have to look at some of the comments on here and on the FB groups to see that people are genuinely staying away because the "entertainment" on offer is negligible.
Granted, its conjecture......but I don't believe it to be baseless!
I did say 'significant' contribution, and so I guess it depends on what you class as 'significant'. I'm sure there are people who stay away because of their dislike of the style of play, but (only IMO of course) the number who do this is negligible and in no way 'significant'.
Interestingly, a comparison of the home attendances from this season and the Wilder promotion season at the same stage show that we are averaging higher now than then, which tends to contradict your theory:
15/16 4258 - First 12 home matches.
19/20 4532 - First 12 home matches.