Expert discourse and consumer perceptions in the governance of intangible cultural heritage crafts

Expert discussions of intangible cultural heritage crafts address education, participation, markets and cultural exchange, yet how these concerns relate to consumer perceptions remains unclear. This study examines these connections in China through thematic analysis of two expert forum compilations from 2023 to 2024 and a forum-informed survey of 400 consumers. Principal component analysis and structural equation modeling yielded 29 indicators, nine first-order factors and four higher-order constructs. Heritage education was positively associated with social identity, and both were directly associated with cultural commercialization. Social identity was also associated with cross-cultural communication. However, the direct association between cross-cultural communication and commercialization was not supported by the bootstrap confidence interval. The findings place education and identity alongside market considerations in understanding consumers’ perceptions of craft commercialization. Cultural exchange was not supported as an additional direct correlate of commercialization in this model. Environmental concerns identified in the forums were absent from the measured model, indicating a gap in its coverage of the governance agenda. The study contributes to craft governance research by identifying which relationships within an expert-informed framework receive support from consumer evidence. It offers grounds for assessing cultural participation, exchange and market development separately while examining their connections.