3.4 Ethical Considerations

Ethics could play an important role in academic research. Usually, different countries have their own moral standards regarding political, scientific, or practical actions, and these rules are occasionally altered to fit new social ideology (Joyce & Rankin, 2010). This paper follows the ethical codes produced by the American Psychological Association (APA) the British Psychological Society (BPS).

Though these codes were settled in different conditions they share common values. Consequently, the code of ethics shall take responsibility, benefit, integrity, respect, and justice (APA, 2017; BPS, 2018). While in China, there is not a national code of ethics yet but the traditional values have been planted deeply in every aspect of society.

This paper takes ethics into considerations when designing, sending, and collecting the questionnaire. First of all, all respondents are voluntary and every one of them has the right to withdraw from the research anytime. No offensive language or intentions shall be applied during any stage of this research. The aim, content, and data handling method would be informed to the respondents. According to the Data Protection Act (1998) published in the UK, this paper fully respects every participant’s anonymity and privacy. All data shall be collected by the author alone and shown to no one else. Once the research is done, all original data would be destroyed without copies in any form.

3.5 Summary

In summary, this paper tries to conduct a comprehensive methodology to develop solid research and to reach reliable empirical work outcomes. The rights and privacy of participants are fully considered and well respected. However, the research design contains some inherent limitations.

In spite of the fact that qualitative research is appropriate to this study, exploratory research typically requires a smaller sample size compared with conclusive research, which means the range of applying the results might be reduced. Plus, this research focuses on college students in Beijing, a highly international and well-developed region in China. So, their attitude towards museums might be very different from some less advanced places.

Chapter Four Findings

4.1 A Brief Introduction of the Palace Museum

Regarding the affecting factors of museum audience determined from previous literature, this section introduces some relevant facts about the Palace Museum for later analysis. All information below could be founded on the official website of the Palace Museum.

The appearance of the museum. The interior and exterior decoration of the Palace Museum preserves the cultural characteristics of the Ming and Qing Dynasties as much as possible, from time to time it carries out necessary modern architecture maintaining approaches, electrical construction, fire prevention facilities, and so on.
Exhibitions and collections. The Palace Museum has a large collection of exhibits and a large number of rooms. Plus, on average, there would be more than 20 special temporary exhibitions each year to attract more visitors and display more masterpieces.

Transportation.

The Palace Museum provides an online downloadable map of transportation (in Figure 7). The Palace Museum is inside the West 2nd Ring road in Beijing, very close to the center. As a result, most universities and higher education institutions are more than 5km away. The traffic being what it is, it would cost students upwards of 50RMB to get there by cab. Therefore, the most common way is by public transportation.

For the past decade, students have enjoyed a special bus pass, which allows them to take the bus anywhere in the city for just 1RMB. However, the downside is that all public buses are usually extremely crowded, to the point where one doesn’t even need to stand on their own. The ticket office seems to be a bit far from everything. However, this isn’t a big issue as people only need to buy one ticket to access all the exhibits, as well as, interesting items on display that can be seen while en route to and fro the ticket office.

Figure 7: Transportation of the Palace Museum (Source: The Palace Museum website)

Ticket price. There is an 80,000 daily visitors’ limitation of the Palace Museum, so it is recommended to buy tickets online in advance. The ticket price in the peak season (April 1st – October 31st) is RMB 60 yuan and the price in the off-season (November 1st – March 31st) is RMB 40 yuan. Students’ price is RMB 20 yuan in spite of visiting season. There are two separately charged regular exhibitions inside, which are the Treasure Gallery (Chinese: 珍宝馆) and the Hall of Clocks (Chinese: 钟表馆), which tickets are both RMB 10 yuan and offer a 50% off student discount. The student discount acts as an incentive for students to go to the museum, as it is much cheaper. However, food and beverages are still the same prices for all visitors.

Supporting facilities. The Palace Museum provides a wide range of supporting facilities including an information consultant, audio guide, lost & found the center, cafeteria, first aid, ATMs, souvenir stores, and of course, lavatories. However, the layout of these facilities seems to be imbalanced. For example, there are only 12 lavatories in an area of 1,110,000 square meters but 20 shops.

Furthermore, every 100 meters or so, there is a staff member waiting to guide any lost visitors and answer questions. The palace museum also offers guided tours, in a few forms. They have audio devices in several different languages that will activate once you are in proximity to an exhibit. Then there are personal tour guides, who will join you and your friends and explain the history and context of each exhibit. Lastly, there are group tours, where the tour guide has recently been equipped with a microphone and speaker to ensure everyone can hear what they are saying.

4.2 Analysis of the Questionnaire
4.2.1 Background Information

This paper collects 105 valid questionnaires. Among 105 participants, 36.2% were males and 61.9% were females. The gender distribution is consistent with the conclusions in the previous literature studies, which is females tend to visit museums more than males. Most participants originally come from Jiangxi and Guangdong – 22 participants were from Guangdong, accounting for 21%, and 52 participants were from Jiangxi, accounting for 49.5%.

There may be deviations during the sampling, resulting in lower sample variability. As for majors, the respondents were mainly natural science majors, accounting for 39.05%; there were no medical students, and other majors were more evenly distributed. The grade distribution is also relatively balanced, covering students from the first to the fourth college year and special majors (five-year program).

In addition, in accordance with earlier research on literature, for college students, living expenses are one of the most important factors affecting consumption/cultural activities. 47.62% of the respondents in this survey had a monthly allowance or income of less than RMB 1,000 yuan, and 35.24% of them had monthly living expenses of RMB 1,000-2000 yuan. Lower monthly living expenses limit students’ financial investment in cultural activities.

This is probably why 68 respondents claimed that they do not go visit the Palace Museum at all. However, there are two core audiences who go to the Palace Museum more than five times a year. Developed from the previous literature, the survey found that the student structure was 64.75% non-engagement audience, 29.52% medium engagement audience, 3.81% of high engagement audience, and 1.9% of the core audience. The