Study on the Integration of Literary Ethics Criticism and Ethical Characteristics of Huai Opera Regional Culture
Data publikacji: 17 mar 2025
Otrzymano: 14 paź 2024
Przyjęty: 29 sty 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-0197
Słowa kluczowe
© 2025 Wenya Xu et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Huaiju opera is a national intangible cultural heritage and the most representative local opera in Jiangsu Province. Huaiju opera originated from the folk door sighs, incense play, through the “Hui clip can” “Beijing clip Huaiju” and other stages of development, is the formation of the local theater in Jiangsu, mature in Shanghai [1-2]. Influenced by the regional culture, nature and social environment, Huaiju opera is marked with the color of sadness from the beginning and has strong regional cultural ethical characteristics [3-4]. Interpreting the regional cultural ethical characteristics of Huaiju opera with the critical theory of literary ethics will help to show the teaching function of Huaiju opera and realize the ethical value of cultural works.
Literary Ethics Criticism is a method of literary criticism proposed and developed on the basis of existing literary ethics, taking into account the problems and needs of literary studies [5]. The basic view of literary ethical criticism is that literature is not the art of language but the art of text, that text is both the vehicle and the form of literature, that all literature has a text, and that literature without text does not exist [6-7]. Language is not an entity but exists only in the process of generation [8]. The essence of ethical literary criticism is to reveal the ethical connotation and value of literary works, analyze the ethical conflicts, ethical dilemmas, and ethical choices existing in literary works, explore the relationship between them and the theme ideas, image shaping, artistic structure, art forms, and artistic forms of literary works, and then explore the ethical concepts, ethical thoughts, and ethical traditions of writers, and pursue the social, cultural, historical, and psychological sources of all ethical phenomena in literary works [9-12]. Restore history, restore the scene, restore the essence, not to force the ancient people with today’s ethical concepts and ethical rules, but to explain the occurrence of ethics, its emergence, formation, significance and its causes with the ethical norms of the time [13].
Combining the critical method of literary ethics, the study discusses the regional cultural and ethical characteristics of Huaiju opera in terms of its grassroots cultural attributes, the everydayness of its expressive subjects, and its tragic character from the three dimensions of ethical environment, ethical identity, and ethical choices, and reveals its folk origins, the portrayal of common people, and its tragic spirit. In order to explore the cultural inheritance path of Huaiju opera, communication cases are selected from relevant websites, their conditional and outcome variables are set, and qualitative comparative analysis methods are applied to analyze them. By analyzing the necessity and sufficiency conditions of the collected data, the combined path of Huaiju opera’s communication development is obtained. At the same time, we design creative products for the promotion of Huaiju opera, and combine the cultural three-level analysis method to select the consumer demand items of Huaiju opera’s creative products from the three dimensions of the external tangible layer, the middle behavioral layer and the internal intangible layer. After collecting data through the questionnaire survey, we combined the Kano model to categorize the demand items, calculate the Better-Worse index, and draw a scatter matrix to obtain the design factors of Huaiju opera cultural and creative products with different attributes.
Literary Ethics Criticism is a literary criticism method mainly used to interpret, analyze and explain literary works, study writers and issues related to literature from an ethical standpoint. Based on the perspective of literary ethics criticism, this paper analyzes the regional cultural ethical characteristics of Huaiju opera. The regional cultural ethical features of Huaiju opera are illustrated in Figure 1, from three dimensions: ethical environment, ethical identity and ethical choice.
The regional cultural and ethical characteristics of Huai opera
Huaiju Opera is a popular local opera in Jiangsu, Shanghai and other places with great influence, originating from the Yanfu area in northern Jiangsu Province and the Jiangsu-Huaikou area, and its main birthplace is Jianhu County in Yancheng City, with a history of more than 200 years. Initially, Huaiju opera was mainly popular in Huaiyin, Yancheng, Yangzhou and other areas north of the Yangtze River and south of the Huaihe River. At the beginning of the 20th century, a large number of people from the northern part of Jiangsu Province came to Shanghai to make a living and entered the city and gradually became one of the main local opera styles in Shanghai. As a local culture of the Lixiahe area in the north of Jiangsu Province, Huaiju Opera, with its rich local characteristics, demonstrates the history of the local people and the spiritual qualities of the ethnic groups. As a result, Huaiju opera has developed a unique cultural character and artistic style. Compared with the northern theaters, Huaiju is not as graceful and elegant as Beijing Opera, and not as cool and exciting as Qin Opera. Compared with the southern theaters, Huaiju is not as soft and graceful as Yueju, nor does it have the scholarly temperament of Kunqu. However, Huaiju Opera has a rich local flavor originating from the land of Lixiahe area in northern Jiangsu Province, the characteristics of both North and South styles, as well as the tragic colors originating from the environment in which it grew up.
A literary work cannot be separated from the specific context in which it was created; simply put, the ethical environment is the external environment in which literature arises and exists. When analyzing a specific text using the critical method of literary ethics, it must be based on the historical ethical environment.
The ethical environment in which Huaiju opera originated is shown in Figure 2. Huaiju opera originated in the Lixia River area, a plain in northern Jiangsu province north of the Yangtze River, south of the Huai River, and east of the canal. People here have been farming for generations. During the collective labor of farming in the fields, people often sing to relieve their fatigue and soothe their moods, and folk ditties are quite abundant. The geography of the Lishiahe Plain, which is surrounded by highlands and lowlands in the middle, makes the region a place of great abundance, but also a place of serious floods and droughts. Disaster victims in the process of leaving their homes to beg, borrowing the melodic tones of their hometown folk songs to tell their own misery, rappers aim to win the sympathy of the giver, so their tunes are more sorrowful and desolate, tear-jerking. The change in the way of begging changed the beggar into an early countryside wandering artist, which was the first generation of actors in Huaiju opera. The singing style they used for begging was known as “door sighing words”. In the process of popularization, the “door sighing words” merged with the “incense and fire play” and developed into an independent form of drama, the “Salt and Huai Opera”. The so-called “incense play” refers to the original religious activity of praying for blessings and honoring the gods during the Ming and Qing dynasties, which was popular among the folk of Lishiahe.
The ethical environment of the source of Huai opera
From the perspective of its origin, although Huaiju opera has gone through a long process of germination and development, and has been deeply impregnated by the agrarian culture, and is connected with the grassroots masses, and is popular with the general public, and has a simple, natural and unostentatious style of performance, it is obvious that the agrarian culture is characterized by the lack of power of cultural innovation brought about by the land of peace, self-sufficiency, self-satisfaction, closure and conservatism, etc. In the early days, the direct purpose of Huaiju opera artists was not a spiritual pursuit and aesthetic creation, but rather as a means to make a living. The purpose of early Huaiju artists was not a spiritual pursuit and aesthetic creation, but rather as a means of earning a living, and the audience only used it as a tool to delight their senses after hard work, not as an art appreciator. Such a low standard for Huaiju opera also made the form of Huaiju opera a little rough compared to other operas, closer to the original state of life, and lacking an internal driving force for cultural growth and development. As a result, there is a lack of innovation in the repertoire of Huaiju opera, and the singing voice drags. For a long time, traditional repertoires such as “Nine Lotus,” “Thirteen Young Men,” and “Seventy-two Memoirs” have always occupied the leading roles, and the art form is relatively crude and old-fashioned, making it difficult to win over young audiences. It is difficult to win the youth audience.
Ethical identity is based on an objective analysis of the ethical relationships in which the characters are placed. The study of the ethical identity of the characters in the text is of great significance both for the characterization itself and for the storyline.
Most of the main subjects of expression in Huai opera works are village girls, farmers, peddlers, dock workers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and so on. In Huaiju dramas, the standard images of emperors and generals, talented men and women are seldom seen; instead, they are replaced by the personal experiences, what they have seen and heard, or a little bit of what they think of the common people in the village. As a result, a large number of themes in Huaiju dramas, in addition to some works based on folklore and historical stories, a considerable portion of them is a true portrayal of the current life. They directly reflect the daily life of the common people in the lower class of Chinese society in different periods of time. The everydayness of the main subject of Huaiju opera is shown in Fig. 3, with the common people in the village as the main subject of expression, and such a creative perspective makes Huaiju opera correspond to the essence of popular culture in the three aspects of characterization, story content, and spiritual interest.
The daily expression of the main body of Huai opera
Recognizability of Characters
Huaiju opera takes village girls, farmers, vendors, workers and carpenters as the main stage performers, and these characters are recognizable as commoners. They are born at the bottom of society, and their daily lives are ordinary and real, so the actors don’t need to worry too much about the stage norms when they perform. This creates the popularity of the stage embodiment.
Daily Behavior of Story Content
Peking Opera and local operas mostly depict the lives of emperors and generals, talented people and beautiful women. Because of their identity characteristics, they have produced a set of regularized and standardized programs that constrain each other and complement each other. On the other hand, Huai Opera does not have too many programmatic constraints and requirements. The main body of its performance is the common people in the village, and most of the stories are about their daily life. Therefore, there is no need for too many standardized actions in the whole performance process of Huaiju opera, which is a complete imitation of the daily behaviors of the common people in the villages, i.e., singing and crying in sadness.
Popularity of Spiritual Interests
Huaiju opera has established the style of taking the villagers as the main body of expression, not only getting rid of the constraints of the orthodox culture, but also obtaining the convenience of breaking the “nobility and elegance”. The characters on stage can reflect the inner activities, real emotions and interests of the common people as they wish.
The theories and discourses of literary ethics criticism are actually theories and discourses about ethical choices, the interpretation and construction of ethical choices, and the analysis and interpretation of ethical choices.
Compared with other local opera genres, Huaiju is particularly good at playing tragedies, and it has created the “Huai sad tune” and “big sad tune”, which are good at performing sad and bitter feelings. The harsh natural and social environments have created the melancholy artistic temperament of Huaiju opera, which expresses the people’s deep-seated pain, grief and helplessness. Many of Huaiju’s bitter plays are characterized by ethical conflicts, i.e., conflicts between two opposing ethical and moral forces, such as good and evil, loyalty and treachery, etc. Although the conflict is also manifested as a concrete entity, both sides of the conflict actually embody two opposing ethical and moral concepts, and the cause of the conflict is due to the bullying of the good by the evil, and the result of the conflict is that the good ultimately triumphs over the evil, so that the people can get the ethical and moral education on right and wrong, good and evil. The moral and ethical forces that cause the conflict are sometimes not the self-consciousness of the protagonist of the tragedy, such as “filial piety”, “loyalty” and other obligations and responsibilities, which results in the personalization of the tragic conflict is weakened, and the socialization of the color becomes thicker, and to a certain extent weakens the tragic nature of the conflict. The tragic nature of the conflict is somewhat weakened. At the same time, they also show the oppression of good by evil in a distorted way, and the resistance of good to evil in an ethical negative way, which also greatly weaken the tragedy and sharpness of the conflict. Finally, in terms of the ending of the plot, no matter how miserable and twisted the previous episodes are, they eventually try their best to reach completion.
As a kind of excellent intangible cultural heritage, the effective inheritance of Huaiju opera is of great significance. It not only helps people to understand and recognize history, but it is also the basis for history to evolve and innovate. After discussing the regional cultural and ethical characteristics of Huaiju opera by using the method of literary ethics criticism, this chapter analyzes the inheritance path of Huaiju opera by combining the method of qualitative comparative analysis.
This paper adopts a multi-case grouped comparative analysis method based on the logic of set relationship, i.e. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA).The QCA method focuses on analyzing the sufficient and necessary conditions for the occurrence of a certain case or social phenomenon, and analyzes the multiple conditions and concurrent causes of the occurrence of the phenomenon through multi-case comparisons, and identifies the logical relationship between the combination patterns of different condition variables and the outcome variable, i.e. Identify which combinations of conditional variables can lead to the occurrence or disappearance of the outcome variable, so as to find out the synergistic effects of multiple conditional variables that trigger the occurrence of the outcome variable, in order to sort out the core influencing factors and multiple paths that can cause the occurrence of the outcome variable.
The QCA method is based on the configuration perspective, and simplifies each logic configuration through Boolean operations, and each case selected in the research topic is the result of a combination of conditions. In Boolean operations, symbols such as “+”, “*” and “=” represent “or”, “and”, “lead to” meaning, the upper-case letters that the condition exists, the lower-case letters on behalf of the condition is absent. For example, A*B=Y means that the simultaneous appearance of A and B leads to the appearance of Y. a*B=Y means that the absence of A and the appearance of B lead to the appearance of Y. Combining the two equations reveals that regardless of whether or not A occurs, as long as B occurs, it can lead to the appearance of Y. At this point, A is a redundant term, and the operation can be simplified to arrive at B=Y. Since the generation of a result may be affected by multiple combinations of conditions, the QCA method simplifies the logical operation and makes the result clearer.
QCA methods can be further divided into clear set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA), multi-valued set qualitative comparative analysis (mvQCA), and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). fsQCA is to assign a variable between [0,1], i.e., the variable is at any value between fully subordinate and fully unaffiliated, and the variable is assigned not in a fixed distance, but in a continuous and systematic way. In this paper, fsQCA method is used to make cross-case comparisons of the communication development of Huaiju opera and explore the key factors and paths of Huaiju opera’s inheritance and development.
The fsQCA analysis steps are as follows:
Case selection. fsQCA method is based on quantitative research with cases as the research unit. After clarifying the direction and content of the study, the research object is selected, and choosing a suitable case as the research object is an important prerequisite for carrying out the study, so it is necessary to clarify the scope and number of the selected cases. Variable selection. Variables can be selected through literature induction method, theoretical perspective method, problem-oriented method, expert scoring method and other research methods, so as to determine the outcome variables and condition variables and their number and measure. Data collection. According to the research case and metric conditions, start collecting relevant data. It can be inquired and collected through questionnaires, enterprise interviews, finding databases and organizing secondary data. Data calibration. Due to the different units of data measurement of each variable, it is necessary to calibrate the data of each variable when performing the fsQCA method operation, and transform all the data into the concept of set, and all the values after the transformation are fuzzy affiliation scores located between [0,1]. Necessity analysis. Necessity analysis is first performed on individual condition variables to determine whether individual condition variables are necessary to constitute the occurrence of the outcome variable. When the necessity analysis consistency value is greater than or equal to 0.9, the condition is considered to be a necessary condition for the outcome. Construction of truth table and sufficiency analysis. The truth table is generated by fsQCA software, if there are k condition variables, logically there are 2k potential combinations of conditions in the truth table, the truth table is screened by setting the frequency threshold and the consistency threshold, and then standardized analysis is carried out to obtain the simple solution, the complex solution, and the intermediate solution, and the intermediate solution is usually analyzed. Robustness test. The robustness test is to test the stability of the results, which is usually performed by adjusting the calibration anchor points, changing the frequency and consistency thresholds of the cases, and supplementing or reducing the cases. Results are further analyzed. The intermediate solution is analyzed to derive the corresponding several groupings, and the individual groupings are compared horizontally to observe the complementary, alternating, or mutually inhibiting relationships that exist between the groupings. For different types of group states, the case dialog is realized through typical case explanation to deepen the result analysis.
Case sample selection
According to the requirements of the qualitative comparative analysis method for sample case selection, this paper takes 2010-2023 as the time node, and optimizes the cases from major related websites to meet the following characteristics: first, homogeneity, i.e., there is a certain degree of similarity in the selected cases, and there is a sufficiently large number of backgrounds or characteristics shared among the cases. The second is diversity, which considers maximizing the heterogeneity between cases in the minimum number of cases, and ensures that the cases involve as many diverse Huaiju communication methods as possible. Third, authority, to ensure that the communication cases of Huaiju opera have a certain degree of influence and popularity. Fourthly, timeliness, based on the requirement of small and medium sample size of qualitative comparative analysis method, we select Huaiju opera communication cases with certain influence in the society in the recent 14 years. After searching and screening, this paper finally obtains 30 typical cases of Huaiju opera communication.
Variable Selection and Assignment
According to the variable assignment principle of qualitative comparative analysis method, Huaiju opera dissemination elements are divided into 6 conditional variables and 1 outcome variable, and assigned as follows:
Increase the propaganda: regularly strengthen the activities of mass Huaiju opera culture, hold exhibitions of Huaiju opera works, broaden the dissemination channels of Huaiju opera, and set up special channels and columns to publicize the relevant information of Huaiju opera, so as to let the people have a more in-depth understanding of Huaiju opera. Moreover, we have also carried out a wide range of activities to bring Huaiju opera performers into communities and families, creating a strong atmosphere in which the love of Huaiju opera, the pursuit of Huaiju opera, and the appreciation of Huaiju opera have become a popular trend nowadays.
Holding activities in the countryside: Holding activities for Huaiju opera in the countryside allows the opera to enter people’s lives, get more audience’s love, and increase its influence.
Investing funds in new plays: The government invests funds in the creation of new plays every year, so that Huaiju opera performers can create new plays that will retain old audiences and attract new ones.
Supporting the performance market: In response to the current situation of the local opera performance market, the local people’s governments give certain subsidies to Huaiju opera performances, so that people can easily enter the theater and enjoy their favorite Huaiju opera.
Setting up special expenses: The government invests a certain amount of special funds every year, specifically for the discovery, research, inheritance and protection of classic Huaiju opera repertoire.
Bringing Huaiju opera to schools: In order for Huaiju opera to be passed on, the main thing is to cultivate young audiences. Let Huaiju opera enter the campus and cultivate a new generation of audience.
Outcome variable--Communication effect: Communication effect is the objective result caused by communication behavior, including all the influences and consequences that actually happen to others and the surrounding society.
The Boolean algebra principle of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fs QCA) requires the assignment of dichotomization “1” or “0” after determining the variables. The main conventions are as follows: a given dichotomous variable assigned a value of 1 means “yes” (strong) and is denoted by [A]. When a dichotomous variable is assigned a value of 0, it means “no” (weak), which is indicated by [a] or [~A]. In this paper, we mainly refer to the weight of the number of cases for the assignment, that is, when the variable accounts for more than 50% of the cases, it is assigned a value of 1. When it is less than 50%, it is assigned a value of 0.
In the step of qualitative comparative analysis of fuzzy sets, after calibrated dichotomization of the data, necessity and sufficiency condition analysis needs to be carried out, and the necessity condition analysis is to observe whether a single condition can directly constitute the effective dissemination of Huaiju opera. The results of the necessity condition analysis in Table 1 show that among the six variables, only increasing publicity is greater than 0.9, which indicates that increasing publicity is a necessary condition that directly leads to the significant dissemination of Huaiju opera, whereas the other five antecedent conditions are all less than 0.9, which can’t explain the results alone. Therefore, a combination of multifactorial conditions is needed to constitute a significant Huaiju opera spread.
Necessity condition analysis
| Result variable: propagation effect | ||
| Boost publicity | 0.847 | 0.886 |
| Local activities | 0.766 | 0.869 |
| Invest money for new shows | 0.683 | 0.844 |
| Support the performance market | 0.785 | 0.857 |
| Set special cost | 0.718 | 0.863 |
| The Huai opera walks into the campus | 0.601 | 0.915 |
Unlike single-conditional necessity analysis, conditional grouping analysis refers to a sufficiency analysis in which different combinations of multiple conditions lead to an outcome. In the sufficiency condition analysis, consistency remains an important criterion for testing whether the conditional grouping is a subset of the outcome set, i.e., when the consistency level is greater than 0.75, the conditional grouping can be recognized as having a high degree of explanation of the outcome. In this paper, the consistency threshold is set at 0.8, and 17 cases in which Huaiju opera was significantly disseminated are finally retained. Since it is already known that increasing publicity is a necessary condition, in the output intermediate solution, for the question of under what state the six conditions will lead to effective dissemination, this paper chooses “core condition exists”, and the remaining five conditions choose “core condition is absent or auxiliary condition exists. “. After the fs QCA 3.0 software operation, three combinations of complex, intermediate and simple solutions with different levels of complexity are derived. Based on the current qualitative comparative analysis paradigm, this paper mainly analyzes the intermediate solution based on the simple solution.
The groupings for realizing the effective dissemination of Huaiju opera are shown in Table 2, ● = core condition exists, ⊗ = core condition is absent, • = auxiliary condition exists, and “space” indicates that the condition can be present or absent. According to the four results given by the intermediate solution, which can explain the validity of Huaiju drama communication, the consistency of these condition combinations is 0.856~0.938, which is a good indication that they can fully be the sufficient condition combinations for the reference of Huaiju drama communication researchers. From the cross-section of each grouping condition, increasing publicity is the core element of calligraphy dissemination.
The configuration results of the effective propagation of Huai show
| Predue condition | Conditioned configuration | |||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| Boost publicity | ⊗ | ● | ● | ● |
| Local activities | ● | ⊗ | ● | |
| Invest money for new shows | • | ⊗ | • | |
| Support the performance market | • | • | ||
| Set special cost | • | ● | • | |
| The Huai opera walks into the campus | • | • | • | |
| Consistency | 0.875 | 0.856 | 0.915 | 0.938 |
| Original coverage | 0.728 | 0.776 | 0.778 | 0.805 |
| Net coverage | 0.154 | 0.079 | 0.149 | 0.088 |
| Overall consistency | 0.937 | |||
| Overall coverage | 0.945 | |||
The raw coverage rates of the four combination paths are 0.728, 0.776, 0.778 and 0.805, respectively, of which the coverage rate of conditional combination 4 is the highest, explaining 80.5% of the effective communication cases of Huaiju opera. The paths are increasing publicity - investing funds for new repertoire - supporting the performance market - Huaiju opera in schools.
According to the group state analysis of Huaiju opera’s communication path in the previous chapter, increasing the publicity of Huaiju opera is the main influencing factor for the development of Huaiju opera’s communication. Thus this chapter starts from the perspective of publicity and promotion of Huaiju opera, designs the cultural and creative products of Huaiju opera to let more young people understand the culture of Huaiju opera, and analyzes the consumer demand for Huaiju opera cultural and creative products by combining with the Kano model.
Kano model is a method to effectively analyze the impact of user requirements on satisfaction by qualitatively and quantitatively describing them, revealing the correlation between product performance and user satisfaction.The Kano model is shown in Fig. 4, which delineates five attributes of user requirements: appealing (A), aspirational (O), must-have (M), indistinguishable (I), and reversed (R) requirements.
The Kano model
Specifically, Must-have needs (M) are essential attributes of user expectations whose presence does not increase satisfaction and whose absence reduces it substantially. Expected Requirements (O) are those that increase user satisfaction when the product fulfills them, and vice versa. Attractive needs (A) are those additional features or characteristics that significantly increase user satisfaction and when missing do not affect satisfaction. No-difference requirements (I) indicate that users are largely indifferent to whether the product has the attribute or not, and do not affect their satisfaction. Reverse-type requirements (R), on the other hand, refer to certain features of a product that may reduce user satisfaction and whose removal would instead increase satisfaction.
The analysis flow of Kano model is shown in Figure 5. With the two-way questionnaire of Kano model, this study will calculate and rank the satisfaction coefficients of the requirements in order to collect key information to serve the design practice. Initially, the Kano two-way questionnaire will be designed based on the user requirements integrated from the initial survey. Subsequently, the data collected from the questionnaire will be analyzed in order to categorize the requirements. Eventually, Better-worse coefficients will be used to define the prioritization of requirements to ensure that user needs can be accurately captured.
Analysis flow of the Kano model
The Better-Worse coefficient aims to quantitatively assess the importance of user needs by calculating the ratio of the relative impacts of the need attributes on satisfaction and dissatisfaction, which are calculated by formulas (1) and (2) as follows:
The theory is applicable to assessing the magnitude of the effect of certain features on increasing user satisfaction or reducing feelings of dissatisfaction. Specifically, the Better coefficient reflects the enhancing effect of a positive functional attribute on user satisfaction and is a measure of the attribute’s ability to satisfy user needs. The larger the value, the more significant the positive effect of the functional attribute on user satisfaction and the faster the satisfaction is increased. On the contrary, the Worse coefficient represents the possible negative impact on user satisfaction in the absence of a particular functional attribute and is usually negative. The smaller the absolute value of this coefficient, the less negative the impact on user satisfaction when the attribute is missing, and the slower the rate of decrease in satisfaction. The larger the absolute value, the more significant the negative impact and the faster the decline in satisfaction.
The final destination of Huaiju opera cultural and creative products is the consumers, and the cultural and creative design must stand from the perspective of the target consumers, taking the aesthetic trend and preference characteristics of the consumers as the starting point for the development of cultural and creative products. In order to publicize Huaiju opera culture to young people, the target group was positioned at 15-35 years old for this purpose. And relying on the questionnaire, we analyzed the consumer demand of Huaiju opera cultural and creative products by using the theory of three levels of culture and the Kano model.
The questionnaire is divided into three sections, the first part is single-choice questions, mainly to understand the basic information of the target group and their knowledge of Huaiju opera. The second part is multiple choice questions to understand the research object’s understanding of the cultural and creative products and the purchase situation. The third part is consumer demand analysis, which is the main part of the questionnaire to understand the consumers’ aesthetic tendency towards Huaiju museum culture. Therefore, before designing the questionnaire, the demand factors will be designed with the help of cultural three-level theory.
The three-level theory of culture provides a method to explore the essence of culture, which is to divide culture into three levels: external tangible layer, intermediate behavioral layer, and internal intangible layer. Thus, the external tangible layer of Huaiju opera cultural and creative products is attributed to color X1, shape X2, reductiveness X3, and exclusive packaging X4, the intermediate behavioral layer is attributed to product portability X5, practicality X6, interactivity X7, and fun X8, and the internal ideological layer falls into regional characteristics X9, cultural connotations X10, storytelling X11, commemorative significance X12, and representativeness X13.
The questionnaire survey was conducted by means of a web-based questionnaire, and 162 questionnaires were returned. Because the target group of this Huaiju opera cultural and creative design is young people, the questionnaires were initially screened and 15 questionnaires were screened out. Subsequently, in order to ensure the validity of the data, invalid questionnaires with the same answer and questionnaires with less than 60 seconds of response time were eliminated. The final number of questionnaires was 137.
The results of the questionnaire were analyzed using the kano model, and Fainbi was applied to analyze the frequency and volume ratio of the attributes of each question, and the one with the highest frequency and volume ratio was the final attribute of the demand item. The consumer demand Kano attributes are categorized as shown in Table 3. There are no essential type M and reverse type R demand items in the consumer demand of Huaiju cultural and creative products. There are 3, 4, 4, and 2 charm-type needs (A), expectation-type needs (O), secondary attributes (I), and contradictory attributes (Q), respectively. Among them, Huaiju color X1, product portability X5 and practicality X6 in the charm-type demand, and fun X8, regional characteristics X9, story X11 and commemorative significance X12 in the expectation-type demand should be focused on in the design process. Although it is concluded that exclusive packaging X4, interactivity X7 and cultural connotation X10 and representativeness X13 among the secondary attributes are not particularly important, they should also be considered as appropriate according to the design program.
Consumer demand Kano attribute classification
| Item | Classification | A | M | O | Q | I | R | Grouped |
| X1 | Frequency | 44 | 9 | 22 | 28 | 31 | 3 | A |
| Proportion | 0.321 | 0.066 | 0.161 | 0.204 | 0.226 | 0.022 | ||
| X2 | Frequency | 18 | 1 | 5 | 67 | 33 | 13 | Q |
| Proportion | 0.131 | 0.007 | 0.036 | 0.489 | 0.241 | 0.095 | ||
| X3 | Frequency | 25 | 20 | 27 | 44 | 6 | 15 | Q |
| Proportion | 0.182 | 0.146 | 0.197 | 0.321 | 0.044 | 0.109 | ||
| X4 | Frequency | 33 | 7 | 25 | 25 | 36 | 11 | I |
| Proportion | 0.241 | 0.051 | 0.182 | 0.182 | 0.263 | 0.080 | ||
| X5 | Frequency | 35 | 17 | 33 | 16 | 24 | 12 | A |
| Proportion | 0.255 | 0.124 | 0.241 | 0.117 | 0.175 | 0.088 | ||
| X6 | Frequency | 51 | 3 | 19 | 21 | 30 | 13 | A |
| Proportion | 0.372 | 0.022 | 0.139 | 0.153 | 0.219 | 0.095 | ||
| X7 | Frequency | 25 | 7 | 29 | 18 | 43 | 15 | I |
| Proportion | 0.182 | 0.051 | 0.212 | 0.131 | 0.314 | 0.109 | ||
| X8 | Frequency | 27 | 9 | 38 | 19 | 27 | 17 | O |
| Proportion | 0.197 | 0.066 | 0.277 | 0.139 | 0.197 | 0.124 | ||
| X9 | Frequency | 26 | 17 | 33 | 23 | 28 | 10 | O |
| Proportion | 0.190 | 0.124 | 0.241 | 0.168 | 0.204 | 0.073 | ||
| X10 | Frequency | 27 | 7 | 30 | 19 | 39 | 15 | I |
| Proportion | 0.197 | 0.051 | 0.219 | 0.139 | 0.285 | 0.109 | ||
| X11 | Frequency | 31 | 20 | 43 | 15 | 17 | 11 | O |
| Proportion | 0.226 | 0.146 | 0.314 | 0.109 | 0.124 | 0.080 | ||
| X12 | Frequency | 28 | 11 | 43 | 11 | 31 | 13 | O |
| Proportion | 0.204 | 0.080 | 0.314 | 0.080 | 0.226 | 0.095 | ||
| X13 | Frequency | 24 | 16 | 20 | 17 | 45 | 15 | I |
| Proportion | 0.175 | 0.117 | 0.146 | 0.124 | 0.328 | 0.109 |
In order to have a clear picture of consumer satisfaction with the data, the Better-Worse evaluation method was introduced and Finebi software was used to analyze the data to calculate the demander’s satisfaction with the demand item. The consumer satisfaction index is shown in Figure 6. Among the demand items of Huaiju opera cultural and creative products, the Better index value is between 0.40 and 0.68, and the Worse index value is between -0.60 and -0.11. Among them, Utility X6 has the largest Better index value, while Reduction X3Worse index value has the largest absolute value.
Consumer satisfaction index
In order to show the Better and Worse values of each requirement item more clearly, the above data were plotted into a four-quadrant graph using Finebi, with the average of the two (0.58, 0.39) as the quadrant graph origin, the absolute value of the Worse value as the horizontal coordinate, and the Better value as the vertical coordinate, which was divided into four quadrants, with the first being the expectancy-type factor, the second being the charisma-type factor , the third quadrant is the secondary factors, and the fourth is the essential factors.
The scatter quadrant distribution of Better-Worse factor is shown in Figure 7. There are 2, 5, 1, and 5 expectancy, charisma, secondary, and essential factors, respectively. Those that fall into the first and second quadrants are Utility X6, Reducibility X3, Storytelling X11, Fun X8, Memorability X12, Color X1, and Portability X5 (in the order of user satisfaction), which means that providing these features can increase user satisfaction. Those that fall into the first and fourth quadrants are cultural connotation X10, interactivity X7, representativeness X13, exclusive packaging X4, color X1, utility X6, and styling X2, which represents that providing these features can effectively stop user satisfaction from decreasing. Therefore, through the questionnaire analysis, it is learned that in the development of Huaiju cultural and creative products, we should ensure the integration of cultural connotation, interactive experience and accurate restoration of the elements of Huaiju, and on the basis of this, we should try to incorporate the functions of fun experience, commemorative significance, light carrying, representativeness, storytelling, and daily use.
The scattered point quadrant distribution of the Better—Worse coefficient
As a part of intangible cultural heritage, Huaiju opera has a profound cultural charm. This project analyzes the regional cultural characteristics of Huaiju opera by applying the method of literary ethics criticism. Based on the revitalization and development of Huaiju opera, the qualitative comparative analysis method is used to explore its de-inheritance factors and paths, and the Kano model is used to analyze the cultural and creative design of Huaiju opera from the perspective of communication and promotion.
Huaiju opera has gradually developed in people’s daily life and formed the artistic character of simplicity, mellowness, elegance and popularity. Based on the ethical environment, ethical identity and ethical choice in literary ethics criticism, the cultural characteristics of Huaiju opera, such as grassroots cultural attributes, everydayness of the subject of expression and tragic character, are discussed.
The group path analysis obtains four combined paths of Huaiju opera communication development with a coverage rate of 72.8%~80.5%, in which increasing publicity is the core factor of effective communication of Huaiju opera. Analyzed by Kano model, the consumer needs of Huaiju opera’s cultural and creative design were classified into desired factors (2), charismatic factors (5), secondary factors (1) and essential factors (5). Practicality (0.68) and reduction (0.60) are the two factors with the largest absolute values of Better Index and Worse Index, respectively.
With the diversification of people’s entertainment and aesthetics and the acceleration of the pace of life, the art of opera, which takes the traditional performance mode as its soul, has suffered a great existential crisis. Under such circumstances, it is especially important to focus on tapping the intrinsic charm of Huaiju, and to promote the spread and development of Huaiju by increasing publicity, organizing activities of Huaiju to the countryside, investing and supporting relevant government funds, and promoting Huaiju to the campus.
Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province, China (Grant No. 2022SJYB2024).
High-level Talent Research Initiation Project at Yancheng Institute of Technology, China (Grant No. xjr2022033).