Culture Sustainability: Culture Quotient (CQ) and Its Quantitative Empirical Application to Chinese Cities

Abstract

Abstract:Culture sustainability is one of the indispensable components of sustainability. Culture has likely always been an important element for promoting urban and rural sustainable development. It is now playing an increasingly significant role in sparking and incubating innovation, which is becoming the main driver of economic growth and competitiveness. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on how much culture matters to economic performance in a quantitative way. Therefore, in this paper, which is based on an intensive literature review, we try to specifically quantify the importance of culture to urban development in general and urban economic performance in particular, by proposing an index system dubbed as the Culture Quotient (CQ). Following this, an integrated database of 297 prefectural-level cities in China is accordingly established. By manipulating the database, the CQ value for each city is then calculated by using principal component analysis with SPSS (19.0). Afterwards, spatial pattern by CQ value tier is presented and illustrates urban China's "winner-take-all" phenomenon, with the predominance by the three giant urban clusters in the coastal area, i.e., the Jing (Beijing)-Jin (Tianjin)-Ji (Hebei province)-based Bohai rim region, Yangtze River delta, Pearl River delta, as well as some mega-cities such as Chengdu and Wuhan in other parts of China. More precisely, the regression analysis shows that there is a strong positive relationship between CQ and gross domestic product (GDP), with the striking result that every increase of one percentage point in CQ will induce a five percentage point increment in GDP. Although the finding makes an impressive and convincing case that culture does exert a great impact on urban economic development, and can also be measured in a quantitative way in Chinese cases, more cases from other countries need to be included for further verification and confirmation. We therefore urgently call for more in-depth international comparative studies both in theoretical and practical regards.

A Study on Consumers’ Preferences for the Palace Museum’s Cultural and Creative Products from the Perspective of Cultural Sustainability

“…It is linked to previous traditional practices by celebrating local and regional histories and passing down cultural values to future generations" [2]. Culture sustainability is one of the indispensable components of sustainability [3]. From the perspective of the consumer level, college students are the best target group for the development of cultural and creative industries, as they have the ability to quickly accept the culture, and are willing and able to quickly accept new, peculiar, and special things.…”

Sound Design of Guqin Culture: Interactive Art Promotes the Sustainable Development of Traditional Culture

“…Sustainability includes social, economic, ecological, and cultural dimensions [1] and requires every effort to preserve irreplaceable resources [2]. Cultural sustainability is an integral component of sustainability [3]. The protection of intangible cultural heritage plays an important role in cultural sustainability [4].…”

“…Figure 6 clearly shows the results of the AttrakDiff questionnaire in four dimensions.The PQ values(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7) indicate that the interactive Guqin installation reached the pragmatic quality user experience criteria. The HQ-I values(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14) were also above 0, which means that the installation basically met the requirements for the participants' hedonic quality.…”

Identifying the Conditions for Rural Sustainability through Place-Based Culture: Applying the CIPM and CDPM Models into Meibei Ancient Village

“…But the challenge is how to do it. Culture is the unseen permeated ambience to be sensed, felt and experienced [30], and it requires long-term and persistent nurturing, rather than some concrete products which can be designed and constructed within a relatively short period. Therefore, finding an effective approach to integrate the culture factor into the process and system of rural development is a crucial theme for in-depth research.…”

“…As shown in Figure 1, culture could be further decomposed into seven layers based on the analysis of the core components of culture essence [30], i.e., permeated ambience; accumulated heritages; intrinsic norms; perception and organic reactions towards external environs; and long-term Layer I is the original hypothesis of the relationship between human and nature, the gene of human civilization, and the root of value system of human beings; Layer II represents the value attitudes towards the environment and society, which is accumulated into embedded belief and philosophy; Layer III stands for the symbolized expression of the value system to constantly deepen the impression with visual strike; Layer IV refers to the human-based living symbol of cultural model for people to follow; Layer V indicates the customs and festivals with various regular and formal activities to commemorate and worship both the real and legendary heroes; Layer VI means intrinsic social norms and common rules for daily life, accessibility-facilitated spatial communication and cooperation; Layer VII regards as the provision of institutional organization and process management for all kinds of events and activities. The main contents of each layer can be illustrated in Table 1.…”