Evaluation and Promotion Path of Equalization of Urban and Rural Basic Public Cultural Services from the Perspective of Smart City in China

Abstract

The research objectives were three-fold: (1) to study a measurement model for the equalization of basic public cultural services in urban and rural areas, (2) to comprehensively analyze the imbalance between urban and rural basic public cultural services from the perspectives of government resource supply and residents' cultural access sense, and to provide a comprehensive understanding of the status and problems. This study was mixed-method research. (1) the measurement and analysis from the perspective of government resource supply, quantitative analysis was adopted, and Guangdong Province, Hubei Province, and Gansu Province were selected as sample provinces, and 2019-2021 was taken as the study cycle. The statistical analysis was mean, frequency, and standard deviation for measurement and analysis. (2) From the perspective of residents' sense of cultural access, qualitative analysis was adopted, combining interview survey and questionnaire survey data for analysis. There were 30 users of public digital cultural services in the interview survey. A total of 586 questionnaires were collected.

          Major findings: (1) A measurement model for the equalization of basic public cultural services in urban and rural areas in China was low overall, especially in the areas of cultural capital input and cultural product supply; China's mobile cultural facilities as a whole showed a serious lack of status of; there was a serious lack of digital resources in rural areas; and there was a high degree of equalization of mass cultural institutions. (2) The comprehensive analysis of the imbalance between urban and rural basic public cultural services from the perspectives of government resource supply and residents' cultural access sense, and to provide a comprehensive understanding of the status and problems that rural and urban residents had a low level of equalized access to culture, caused by the dual factors of insufficient participation and insufficient satisfaction. The gap between rural residents' sense of access to culture and that of urban residents was obvious. A comparison of participation and satisfaction revealed that participation and satisfaction in public cultural services were interdependent, with lower (or higher) participation in public cultural service programs often corresponding to lower (or higher) satisfaction.