From public digital discourse to sustained engagement: Digital cultural translation of the Twenty-Four Solar Terms

Digital media can increase the visibility of living heritage without securing understanding or sustained engagement. We examined how public digital discourse about the Twenty-Four Solar Terms can be translated into an interpretive stimulus and how users evaluate it. We collected 3,433 publicly visible online text units and retained 1,101 after cleaning and anonymisation. The retained corpus informed collaborative thematic reading; 1,089 texts met the token threshold for keyword extraction and auxiliary topic-model inspection. Thematic analysis identified six cultural theme categories. They covered seasonal diet and bodily care; temporal order and heritage knowledge; and natural phenology and seasonal perception. They also covered folk customs and ritual life; aesthetic imagery and digital creative expression; and agricultural production and everyday practice. These categories informed a five-page storyboard through theme-design mapping and expert-assisted review. Survey data from 350 valid respondents were analysed with covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) and supplementary fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Information clarity, visual aesthetics, perceived explorability and perceived authenticity were positively associated with perceived cultural value. Perceived explorability had the largest standardised path estimate for cultural value, and perceived authenticity was also associated with cultural identity. Perceived cultural value and cultural identity were associated with sustained cultural engagement intention. Configurational analysis identified four sufficient configurations for high engagement and four for low engagement. The two solution sets were asymmetric rather than mirror images. These findings link perceived interpretive qualities, cultural value and cultural identity with sustained cultural engagement intention.