Understanding Governmental Spending on Public Cultural Services: Exploring the Effects of Fiscal Decentralization Variables
- 1 Guangdong Research Center for NPO, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China
- 2 School of Politics and Public Administration, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China
- 3 School of Politics and Public Administration, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China
Abstract
This article explores the fiscal decentralization factors that affect government spending on public culture services in two main point s —imbalance in revenue power and spending responsibility and promotion tournament by using provincial panel data from 1997 to 2015 in China. The results yield three noteworthy findings. First, fiscal decentralization in spending responsibility significantly reduced the proportion of government spending on public cultural services to government spending. The public financial self-sufficiency has a significant positive effect on the ratio of public cultural expenditure and public spending. Second, the coefficient of transfer payment is significantly negative, namely, the current transfer payment in China cannot increase the proportion of public cultural expenditure effectively. Third, the coefficient of government official promotion competition has also a significantly negative effect on public cultural spending. This research contributes to the literature in several ways, most notably by incorporating a more open-systems approach to the study of government spending on public culture services with the inclusion of several fiscal decentralization variables.
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