Chinese Cultural Impact on English Website Users of Chinese Museums

Abstract

This study focuses on investigating the correlation between Chinese cultural influences and Americans’ perspective when viewing the English-language websites of two Chinese museums. Two English-language websites, namely of the Palace Museum and the Power Station of Art, were analyzed by using expert analysis to see if Chinese cultural features have an influence on their home pages. In order to distinguish the effects of Chinese culture on the websites, Hofstede's cultural dimensions and Singh and Pereira’s theory on culturally customizing websites were adopted as the theoretical basis for evaluating the content. In addition, a survey was conducted to examine whether cultural influences on websites have an impact on American visitors’ appreciation. Combining the evaluation of the websites with the analysis of 119 responses from the survey, it was found that Chinese cultural features on these museum websites have no impact on the surveyed American visitors. More data and research in this field should be carried out to enable comprehensive conclusions on what makes museum websites understandable and attractive to potential visitors.