Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the consumption and demand of Chinese citizens for public digital culture, and make suggestions for government-supported public digital culture providers. Design/methodology/approach Through a questionnaire survey, this study investigates the provision of public digital cultural services (PDCS) from the perspective of consumption and demands. Findings The results indicate: the Chinese populace as a whole had low expenses on digital cultural services, and had not effectively utilized them to support their own development; significant disparities exist between demographics, particularly between urban and rural residents; the populace were strongly interested in participation in public digital culture, but the services had low actual utilization rates; and the services had been unable to meet the users’ quality-related demands. Originality/value The first study to approach the provision of PDCS from the side of consumption and user demand.

With the development of information technology and the advent of the digital era, the digitization of cultural heritage and the internet-based equal access to the digitized heritage have received worldwide attention. Taking China as a case study, this paper reviews its efforts and challenges to promote equal access to public digital cultural services (PDCS). It starts by introducing the efforts, including PDCS-related legislations, policies and standards issued by the government, and major government-initiated PDCS projects. They are followed by an analysis of its challenges, including deficiencies in government funding, internet penetration, broadband access rates in the Central and Western regions and rural areas, and the limited digital literacy, cultural knowledge, and income levels of certain population groups. This study concludes with the suggestion that promoting equal access to PDCS in less developed regions, rural areas, and vulnerable groups is still an important task in China, and the government needs to work with private sector partners to overcome the challenges.

Purpose This article aims to provide reference for government departments and public cultural institutions in strengthening the provision of public cultural services for low-income groups, improving services methods and fostering their cultural awareness and cultural rights.Design/methodology/approachEvidence from an empirical study on representative small and medium-sized cities.FindingsThis paper defines the specific aspects of the difficulties faced by urban low-income people in obtaining public cultural services, and it is no longer limited to analyze the causes behind these difficulties from a specific perspective.Originality/valueThe difficulties faced by urban low-income people in obtaining public cultural services are mainly reflected in the following four aspects: external condition pressure, individual condition limitations, service supply difference and feedback mechanism failure.

In recent years, stronger collaboration between China’s public cultural institutions had led to the creation of several public digital cultural resources integration projects, yet certain factors have still hindered the development of the digital integration. In this study, the potential impeding factors were found via literature research and interviews. A questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate the opinions of employees at China’s public cultural institutions regarding these factors. It can be concluded from the survey that the barriers are the institutions’ lack of willingness and capacity to cooperate, segmented management systems, lack of management for the integration projects, intellectual property problems, insufficient policy support, lack of unified standards, lack of diverse sources of funding, and lack of awareness by governments and institutions. The solutions are also discussed.

A public digital cultural resources integration project involves the participation of multiple public cultural institutions, which must undertake different roles and accomplish the project’s missions through cooperation. In this study, we employed some concepts from the role expectation framework from role theory (including the designation and assignment of role expectations, and the designation and assignment of role functions), examined extant literature to obtain the roles of agents and their functions in a collaborative project, designed a role function system, and conducted interviews and a survey with workers in public cultural institutions. The results show that in China’s resources integration projects, there is stronger willingness for institutions to cooperate with institutions of similar administrative ranks; the institutions’ role expectations should be considered when assigning roles, and adequate roles should be given to each entity, with particular notice paid to mediation and coordination from third-party organizations; based on adequate role assignment, the role functions should be further detailed and elaborated at the start of the project.