CONCLUSIONES

Using crosstabs and frequency analysis, section 5.1 provided an introduction to visitors’

reactions and attitudes towards cultural genres in different cultural fields. The aim was twofold: to explore whether there are general tendencies surrounding visitors’ opinions about musical genres, literary works, cultural activities, and leisure activities, and to determine how to understand any emerging trends. The results of the data analyses provided the necessary foundation to apply additional analytical methods (cluster analysis and multinomial logistic analysis). A total of twenty questions and 120 categories were used to test visitors’ cultural tastes and preferences. They were based on ten musical genres and ten literary works (see Chapter 3). Within the musical and literary genres, there were low response rates for the supplementary questions concerning ‘other music’ (4.9%) and ‘other literature’ (2.8%); therefore, those results were not analysed. The findings concerning the twenty cultural products (Figure 11)

187

indicated that visitors to the three contemporary art museums and galleries generally enjoyed an extremely limited range of musical and literary genres from very specific regions.

Figure 11 Proportions of the book and music genres liked by the visitors

In general, visitors expressed their appreciation for a limited range of music genres.

Specifically, among the ten musical genres listed in the questionnaire (as shown in Figure 11), only pop music and classical music (66.1% and 59.1%, respectively) were popular with the majority of respondents. In other words, the majority of the visitors had no affinity for most forms of music, including religious music, folk music, opera, jazz/blues, electronic music, rock, heavy metal/hard rock/punk, and the other forms of music. An interesting finding is that when asked whether they had geographic preferences for their preferred musical and literary genres, most survey participants responded positively. Concerning the art genres listed in the questionnaire, the majority of visitors had specific geographical preferences for their preferred musical and literary

188

works (i.e. more than 68%). This means that few visitors uncritically accepted art forms from different regions or countries. In some cases, the proportion of regionally or culturally favoured musical and literary types reached over 80% of the total population of individuals who enjoyed those cultural forms (as shown in table 5.3-2): 86.3% for folk music, 90.6% for classical music, 88.87% for opera, 85.23% for pop music, 90.1%

for jazz, 85.6% for electronic music, 85.7% for rock, 87.5% for heavy metal, 80.8% for science fiction, 81.4 for fantasy and horror, and 86.5% for manga.

Figure 12 Proportions of the visitors who prefer art genres from specific geographic regions for question 24: could you tell us whether you like music from specific geographic regions?

Another interesting finding (as shown in Figure 12) is that for those who favoured regionally or culturally characterised art genres, work from mainland China and Europe/America were much more popular than work from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, or Japan. Of the visitors who exclusively favoured music from certain geographic zones, only classical music, rock music, and pop music fans announced that they

189

simultaneously liked musical genres from both mainland China (61.1%, 51.2%, and 61.6%, respectively) and Europe/America (71.7%, 75.1%, and 69.9%, respective ly).

For those who preferred the other musical genres, European/American music was more popular than music from other regions or countries with rates of 83.7%, 67.9%, and 77.3% for jazz, electronic music, and heavy metal, respectively. A large proportion of folk and religious music fans exclusively preferred music from mainland China (81.4%

and 60.5%, respectively). The above-mentioned figures indicate that North American and European musical cultures demonstrated a strong influence on the visitors’ cultura l choices.

Figure 13 Proportions of the visitors who like music genres from mainland China and America/Europe

Evidence of limited ranges of interest also existed within the literary section of the

190

Visitors had no interest in literary genres from regions or countries beyond mainla nd China and Europe/America, with the exception of Manga. However, unlike their musical preferences, survey participants did not express preferences for a wide range of book genres that were solely from Europe/America. Fans of both Chinese and European/American books were highly represented among the visitors who liked five out of eight types of books. Of the total number of visitors who confirmed that they had a preference for books from specific countries or regions, 76.2% preferred biographies and autobiographies from mainland China and 60.1% preferred those from Europe/America; 62.9% preferred religious, political or philosophical books from mainland China and 63.9% preferred those from Europe/America; 60.7% preferred art-themed books from mainland China and 71.2% preferred those from Europe/Americ a;

62% preferred romance books from mainland China and 55.4% preferred those from Europe/America; and 64.4% preferred novels from mainland China and 56.6%

preferred those from Europe/America. Most readers who enjoyed practical books (65.3%) only liked books by Chinese authors. 68.4% of visitors who had geographic preferences for their science fiction books preferred science fiction from Europe and America than that from other regions or countries. Looking at Manga and other comic books in connection with geographical or regional preferences, only books from Japan yielded a preference rate above 50% (74.7%).

191 Figure 14 Proportions of the visitors who like literary genres from specific areas (mainland China and

America/Europe)

Seeking more detailed and reliable statistical analysis, twenty-seven variables were designed to better understand cultural preferences in China (see Figure 14). Even though it seeks to understand different aspects of the visitors’ preferences based on an analysis of a wide range of cultural genres, not all of the variables were tested in the final clustering. This is because some of the variables and categories contribute to ‘bad’

quality analytical outcomes. To be more specific, based on the general data description mentioned in the last section, some of the variables did not contribute to any of the clustering results due to the low response rate associated with those variables. A typical example of this type of category is the ‘other’ option for the question: Do you like music/literary genres from specific geographic regions or countries? The response rate to that question only accounts for 0.3% of the total number of visitors. There is another type of problematic variable: rather than having an extremely low response rate, this type of variable has a very unbalanced response rate. Taking pop music as an example, while 66.1% of the visitors had a taste for this music genre, only 33.9% of the visitors

192

variables contributed to a low silhouette score. According to Shih et al., ‘data are meaningful only when one can extract the hidden information inside them’ (2010: 11).

Thus, in order to achieve a more meaningful partitioning, some variables were excluded from the clustering phrase (see Table 9).

3. Chinese Religious, political, or philosophy books 4. Chinese biographies and autobiographies

11. European and American science, fiction, fantasy and horror 12. European and American Romance

Table 9 Variables which were used in the model