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The China museum visit boom: Government or demand driven?

March 2022
Journal of Cultural Economics 46(4)

Authors:

University of Victoria

Visits to Chinese museums have grown eightfold between 1995 and 2016. Growth in museum expenditure and space has contributed to most of the increase in visits, although the free admission policy that was rolled out in 2008 also had a significant impact. Demand factors have not had a major impact on museum visit growth with the possible exception of the increase in urban population. Museum demand exhibits decreasing returns in museum quality and museum space but constant return to scale in both. Finally, the government’s move to free admission, as well as the growth rates in museum space and expenditure, is broadly consistent with the objective of maximizing visits.

National and panel visits per year. Same panels as above but presented differently (select the one that is easiest to read)

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National count, space, expenditure, and admission fee per year

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National urban population and income per year

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Vol.:(0123456789)

Journal of Cultural Economics (2022) 46:135–163

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-021-09410-x

1 3

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The China museum visit boom: Government ordemand

driven?

FenghuaZhang1· PascalCourty2

Received: 8 February 2020 / Accepted: 23 February 2021 / Published online: 1 April 2021

Abstract

Visits to Chinese museums have grown eightfold between 1995 and 2016. Growth

in museum expenditure and space has contributed to most of the increase in visits,

although the free admission policy that was rolled out in 2008 also had a signiﬁcant

impact. Demand factors have not had a major impact on museum visit growth with

the possible exception of the increase in urban population. Museum demand exhibits

decreasing returns in museum quality and museum space but constant return to scale

in both. Finally, the government’s move to free admission, as well as the growth

rates in museum space and expenditure, is broadly consistent with the objective of

maximizing visits.

Keywords Museum demand· Museum visits· China· Cultural investment· China

museum boom

JEL Classiﬁcation Z1· Z18

1 Introduction

China has been building thousands of museums over the past 20years (Bollo &

Zhang, 2017). Sceptics have questioned the Chinese government’s aggressive

museum supply policy (The Economist, 2018). Showing that museum visits have

exploded, as is indeed the case, will not end the debate. To ﬁnd out whether muse-

ums create their own demand, it is necessary to disentangle changes in museum

supply from other changes that have simultaneously taken place within the Chi-

nese society such as the growth of cities, and the steady increase in income and

education. On the supply side, it is also important to untangle the role played by

* Pascal Courty

pcourty@uvic.ca

1 National Institute ofCultural Development, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

2 Department ofEconomics, University ofVictoria, andCEPR, Victoria, Canada

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