Public Cultural Crowdfunding: A New Approach to Engage Individuals in Local History Appreciation and Creation

Abstract

Under China’s active construction of the inclusive non-basic public cultural service system and the special highlight on social participation in cultural service supply, social forces and public cultural institutions, such as public libraries, museums and galleries, have begun to organize public cultural crowdfunding activities to meet people’s high-quality cultural needs while completing their mission of local historical inheritance. As an innovative attempt made by Chinese public cultural institutions and the government in the inclusive non-basic public cultural service construction, how public cultural crowdfunding works and what influences people’s intention to participate in these activities deserve attention in the research and practice field. After data is collected on the Cultural Jiading Cloud Platform, descriptive analysis is conducted on these crowdfunding activities’ frequency, themes and initiators. Regression analysis is adopted to analyze the impact factors of the public’s intention to participate in these activities. The results indicate that the cultural crowdfunded activity duration, success criteria on the minimum participant number and maximum participant limit positively impact the actual participant number. Besides, crowdfunding prices illustrate a significantly negative impact on the public’s intention to participate in public cultural crowdfunding. Such findings not only illustrate the significant role of government subsidies in the development of inclusive non-basic public cultural services including public cultural crowdfunding, but also indicate that public cultural institutions, activity initiators and the government can attract more participants and thus achieve their historical inheritance functions by highlighting the concept of the inclusive non-basic public cultural services, organizing more long-term and general skill training activities, appropriately increasing the minimum participants required, setting more reasonable prices and providing more subsidies.

Keywords: Public culture, Cultural crowdfunding, Historical inheritance, Culture cloud platform.