Abstract:

[Purpose/Significance] The delivery of public cultural services at the grassroots level is a key issue in developing China's modern public cultural service system. Although digital technology has created new possibilities for wider access to cultural resources, extending high-quality public cultural services to county, township, and village communities remains challenging. Problems such as uneven resource distribution, weak supply-demand coordination, and limited grassroots service capacity continue to affect service effectiveness. In the context of the national cultural digitization strategy, public digital cultural services have emerged as a key means of enhancing grassroots service delivery. Existing studies have discussed policy development, system construction, platform building, service evaluation, and digital inclusion, but relatively less attention has been paid to how public digital cultural services actually function in the process of reaching the grassroots level. This article focuses on this issue and examines the practical steps, internal logic, and realistic constraints involved in extending public digital cultural services to the grassroots. [Method/Process] This article combines case analysis and policy text analysis. It takes the National Public Culture Cloud as the central case and draws on relevant practices in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Zhejiang, and other areas in China. This research design is appropriate because the development of public digital cultural services is influenced not only by technological conditions, but also by policy guidance, institutional arrangements, and local practices. Theoretically, the article draws on public service provision and technological empowerment theories. On this basis, it develops a three-dimensional analytical framework consisting of platform architecture, operating mechanisms, and service scenarios. Through this framework, the article examines how digital platforms support the transmission of cultural resources, how service effectiveness is improved through demand matching, social participation, and user cultivation, and how mobile, immersive, and intelligent applications reshape grassroots cultural participation and user experience. [Results/Conclusions] The study shows that public digital cultural services have paved the way for the expansion of public cultural resources to the grassroots level. However, their effectiveness is not solely dependent on technology. A multi-level platform system has provided technical support for resource connection and transmission, yet inconsistent standards, insufficient data sharing, and repeated platform construction still reduce overall efficiency. At the same time, demand matching, social participation, and user cultivation are important for improving service quality and strengthening grassroots participation. Mobile, immersive, and intelligent service scenarios are also changing the way users access and experience public cultural services. However, digital divide, weak local operation capacity, and insufficient data governance remain major constraints. Therefore, the development of public digital cultural services should move beyond platform building and resource aggregation, and pay greater attention to standard coordination, mechanism improvement, service innovation, and inclusive access. Since this study is mainly based on policy materials and typical cases, future research should focus on strengthening field investigations and comparative analyses.

Key words: public digital culture, grassroots delivery, National Public Culture Cloud, last mile, digital inclusion