The public cultural services as an economic form of strong externality have gradually become apparent in the development of modern economy. However, because the public cultural services in our country nowadays are mainly provided by the governments, the imbalance between supply and demand occurs easily. The main reason for this is that, owing to government-oriented public cultural services, the entire supply process naturally involves problems like administrative performance and department benefits, thus, some misunderstanding of public cultural services exists in the supply process, especially misconceptions about " services”. The supply process of public cultural services under the logic of government administrative affairs is the process that higher level governments assign tasks to lower level governments and then pass on to the grass-roots governments, which provides for the people as the final executers of the tasks. In this top-down logic of government administrative affairs, evaluation criteria for the performance of public cultural services by the grass-roots governments, without doubt, comes not from the public, but from the higher level government officials. Therefore, for the grass-roots governments, the entire supply process of public cultural services is merely a superior-subordinate administrative task, disengaging from the logic and actual function of public services. The so-called public cultural services have become " llogic of administration” rather than " logic of services”. Also, in terms of the results we have so far, most relevant researches focus on the supply side, seriously lacking analysis of the demand side. The key to the problems of public cultural services lies not only in the supply side, but also should be considered from the demand side, so as to improve the way of supply, enhance supply mechanism, adjust the supply mode, and finally reach the balance between supply and demand. This paper focuses on the demand side, which, to some degree, offsets the defects and insufficiency of such academic research in this area. Innovative ideas include: first, the supply efficiency of public cultural services is decided mutually by the levels of efficiency and income of demand. The most efficient public services combination point is the cut-off point of the budget line and the indifference curve. So, the understanding of the consumption capability of public cultural services and the consumption preference in different areas is the key point of enhancing supply efficiency. Second, the key to the long term equilibrium development of public cultural services in our country lies in the balance of long-term flexibility between supply and demand. Due to the uniqueness of the product supply of public cultural services, cultural products are usually produced for the need of cultural inheritance and have low variability. If the way of supply concerning governmental top-down task logic is only adopted, it would result in small flexibility in the supply of public cultural services products, because the governments cannot obtain sufficient information and sensibility towards the market as enterprises do. Because of this, the key point to a balanced supply and demand in public cultural services is to enhance supply flexibility, and the only way to do so is by introducing it to the market. Only the market has the natural flexibility towards prices, quantity, and kinds of products. Also, only by introducing market mechanism a balance can be reached from the demand side, or the perspective of the consumers.
/ Journals / Journal of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
Journal of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
LiuYuanchun, Editor-in-Chief
ZhengChunrong, Vice Executive Editor-in-Chief
GuoChanglin YanJinqiang WangWenbin WuWenfang, Vice Editor-in-Chief
A Study on the Public Cultural Services in China from a Perspective of Demand Logic: A Theoretical Viewpoint Based on Consumer Equilibrium and Cobweb Models
Journal of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Vol. 19, Issue 06, pp. 94 - 103 (2017) DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.jsufe.2017.06.008
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Cite this article
Jia Weixiao. A Study on the Public Cultural Services in China from a Perspective of Demand Logic: A Theoretical Viewpoint Based on Consumer Equilibrium and Cobweb Models[J]. Journal of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 2017, 19(6): 94–103.
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