Page 157 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

156 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

central government’s policy implementation results in local costs’ increase while the benefits
are not high or even damaged, local governments will prefer to hinder, delay or compromise the
implementation of central policies. The cost-benefit of local government depends on factors such
as “the importance of policy, the degree of asymmetry of information and the degree of incentives
that the central government gives to local government” (Yin, Pan, & Lu, 2012). Compared to the
policies closely related to GDP concerned by local government, the free admission policy in the
cultural field is relatively weak. At the same time, in the actual implementation of free admission
policy, the central government does not count or acquaintance the actual supporting situation of
the local government, lacking of the corresponding supervision and evaluation mechanism for the
implementation of local government and the effect of free admission. It has caused the asymmetry
of information between the central and local area, and the central government having insufficient
incentives and restraints for local governments. Therefore, in the case of insufficient local financial
resources, some central and western regions have chosen to prefer local government revenues, that
is, they do not implement or fully implement local matching funds.

4 Suggestions for optimizing free admission policy

Being “public value oriented”, free admission policy is in line with the view that “the government’s
mission is to serve and promote the public interest” which is advocated by traditional political
science and public administration theory (Anderson, 1990). Therefore, the continuation and
optimization of the free admission policy is an optimal choice with multi-win benefits for the
stakeholders, such as governments, public libraries and other cultural venues, the masses.
According to the basic view of policy process theory, the free admission policy has formed a
“one-dimensional” policy process of initial policy planning, policy implementation and policy
outcomes, but has not yet formed a policy cycle, assessment and optimization process with “policy
evaluation feedback” as the logical starting point. Therefore, following the policy process theory,
we must practice a complete “closed-loop” policy process and promote the continuous adjustment
and optimization of the free admission policy through the evaluation and inspection of the policy
processes at various stages.

4.1 At the policy planning level, improving the classified subsidy standards and changing
the single “upper and lower level” subsidy standard into multiple comprehensive standards

At the policy planning level, the current policy design that only uses the administrative level
difference as the sole subsidy standard, which is difficult to consider the cost of venues in different
regions and different scales at the same level. So there may be a shortage of funds in some venues
while the funds are wasted in some other venues. We believe that the difference between the “upper
and lower level” of the administrative level and the “horizontal scale” of the same level (the venue