Emerging Trends and Strategic Responses in Quantitative Empirical Research on Cultural Novelty

: Cultural novelty, known as 'perceived cultural distance', is a subjective perception of cultural distance from a cognitive perspective. Cultural novelty reflects the extent to which people living in another country perceive the difference between the culture of their home country and their country of residence. As each person perceives the cultures of their home and host countries differently, cultural novelty is a better way of understanding cultural distance at an individual level. This paper reviews relevant research at home and abroad, systematically reviews the definition of the concept of cultural novelty, its structure, measurement tools, influencing factors, and interventions, provides a more comprehensive summary of research on cultural novelty, and points out future research trends and directions, offering feasible suggestions for cross-cultural travellers facing cultural novelty barriers.


Introduction
As the process of globalisation continues to advance, international trade, services, and exchanges are becoming more and more prosperous, and people with different identities travel frequently between countries.Some people who have worked or studied very well in their home countries often do not adapt to the new working environment, cultural background, way of thinking and living habits after leaving the country, and this affects their lives, work, and studies; while some people who have lived abroad can quickly integrate into the local society and culture and actively develop in a better direction.Theoretically, different people have different degrees of cultural and social backgrounds, lifestyles, personalities, education, beliefs, political beliefs, economic conditions, hobbies, and so on.This makes it impossible to achieve 100% agreement in the understanding of information between the two parties during communication, resulting in misunderstanding and even conflict (Jia Yuxin, 1997) [1] .
The cross-cultural adjustment of different travellers is influenced by a number of factors, with Cultural Novelty being an important factor that may affect the level of uncertainty encountered in international assignments (Mendenhall & Oddou 1985; Torbiorn 1982) [2] [3] .Cultural novelty varies significantly across personnel in terms of demographic factors [17] and the presence or absence of effects of other variables.This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical and empirical developments in cultural novelty in order to provide a reference for expatriates and to suggest directions for future research on cultural novelty.

The Concept of Cultural Novelty
Since the 1970s and 1980s, scholars at home and abroad have been conducting in-depth research on cultural novelty.The concept of cultural novelty first evolved from the concept of 'cultural distance'."First introduced by Babiker, Cox, and Miller in 1980, the concept of 'cultural distance' refers to the gap between the culture of the home country and the culture of the host country, which is based on cultural differences arising from geographical disparities. [4]urnham (1982) has suggested that cultural distance can help explain the amount of stress international students experience when studying abroad, and that cultural distance is influenced by a number of factors and is not a physical distance.Cultural distance can be measured in three ways: by measuring perceived cultural distance, calculating a cultural dimension index, and clustering to classify cultural groups.It is generally accepted that the greater the difference felt by the expatriate, the higher the level of cumulative stress and psychological discomfort. [5]Kogut and Singh in 1988 defined cultural distance as "the degree of difference between the cultural norms of one country and those of another". [6]t is generally accepted that the concept of cultural distance is not sufficient to explain the real differences between cultures in terms of individual perceptions and that the concept of cultural novelty can better explain this.Cultural novelty is derived from the dimension of 'perceived cultural distance'.Stening (1979)  [7] and Church (1982) [8] both discuss the influence of non-work factors on cross-cultural adaptation and argue that novelty is one of the factors that influence an individual's acculturation, i.e. the more novel and different the culture to which the individual is adapting, the less he or she knows how to behave Black and Stephen (1989) identified cultural novelty as an important situational factor influencing spousal acculturation, using the terms culture and novelty together for the first time as a measure of cross-cultural adjustment, defining it as one's perception of the differences between home and host countries and developed the Cultural Novelty Scale at [9] .
The traditional view is that the greater the degree of cultural novelty, the more difficult it is for expatriates to adapt to the culture of their country of residence (black et al. 1991) [10] .However, some scholars have provided evidence to the contrary, Selmer (2002) [11] found that although Westerners perceived a higher degree of cultural novelty than overseas Chinese, they were better able to adapt to their work environment.This is due to the fact that locals are most patient and supportive of those from a different culture, while locals may believe that those from more similar cultures can look after themselves.
Chao et al. (2017) [12] argue that cultural novelty is commonly assessed based on factors such as customs, values, communication styles and business practices.Jeffrey, Maurizio (2002) [13] adopt the four scales of Hofstede (1980) [14] to measure cultural novelty with a view to avoiding uncertainty about adaptation to the host country and define cultural novelty as the firm's experience based on the average distance between the focal transaction and the joint venture.
The research on cultural novelty in China gradually emerged in the early 21st century, but it was mainly a general introduction, with less scientific and empirical research.
In their study, Wang Zeyu et al. (2013) refer to the concept of cultural novelty, defining it as the degree of difference between the home culture as perceived by expatriate scholars and the culture of their host country [15] .Foreign expatriates differ in their perceptions of their country of residence and their home culture due to inter-individual differences in perceptions, including differences in their knowledge of their country of residence, and the magnitude of this difference is referred to as the degree of cultural novelty.tanIng Bean (2013) used the concept of perceived cultural distance (cultural novelty) to examine how international students perceive cultural differences, using Black and Stephen's Cultural Novelty Scale to measure the cultural novelty of international students [16] .
In his study, Connie Chan (2014) also states that the concept of cultural novelty can better summarize the degree of individual differences and that cultural distance is understood at the cognitive level, which is essentially subjective in nature, and also refers to cultural novelty as "perceived cultural distance" [17] .Zhou (2020), after reviewing the literature on cultural novelty, defines the concept of cultural novelty as the degree of difference between the home culture and the culture of the country of residence as perceived by overseas students. [18]

A Typological Study of Cultural Novelty
A typological study of cultural novelty allows, on the one hand, a more precise description of this complex concept and, on the other hand, for the classification of its different forms through empirical or cluster analysis, the basic idea is to use variables closely related to cultural novelty as clustering variables.We focus on two main issues: firstly, the subtypes of cultural novelty and secondly, the structure of cultural novelty.

1) Cultural Distance
Cultural novelty is a concept derived from one of the traditional dimensions of cultural distance, Perceived Cultural Distance (PCD), which refers to the subjective perception of the extent of cultural differences between the home country and the target country, measured mainly through the perceived cultural differences by the research participants.The Methods of calculating cultural distance can be seen at table 1. Kogut and Singh (1988) classify the factors that produce cultural distance into three categories: firstly, according to different cultural dimensions; secondly, on the basis of cultural clusters; and thirdly, perceived cultural distance. is proposed that five cultural dimensions (power distance, individualism/collectivism, male guide/female guide, uncertainty avoidance, and longterm orientation/short-term orientation) are used, and on this basis, the cultural distance index is calculated using the index calculation method. 2 Cultural Cluster Distance Clark and Pugh(20 01) [21] The calculation of Cultural Cluster Distance is a clustering method to replace the cultural distance index of Kogut and Singh.They define cultural distance as the cultural difference between the cultural group of the host country (home country) and the cultural group of the target country.degree, and divides countries in the world into five cultural groups 2) Cultural Toughness In 1982, Torbitorn was the first to explore measures of cultural toughness from several perspectives of dissatisfaction in terms of job satisfaction, stress levels, health care, housing standards, recreation, food, and co-worker skills [3] .Mendenhall and Oddou (1985)  [2] suggested that depending on the expatriate's country of origin, some cultures may be more difficult to adapt to than others, referred to as cultural distance (Church, 1982) or cultural resilience. [22]It was not until 1989 that Black and Stephen reconsidered the measurement of cultural novelty based on Torbitorn's measure of cultural tenacity, proposing an eight-item scale [9] .Black (1992) uses the term cultural toughness to describe cultural transfer as particularly difficult and asks: is there such a thing as a situation where transfer from some cultures to other specific cultures is usually painful, regardless of the degree of cultural similarity?It is argued that this question and a range of subsidiary questions could be examined in future research [23] .
3) Cultural Differences Marvasti (1994) was the first to consider the impact of differences in cultural background between countries on trade in cultural goods and used variables such as barriers and property rights as proxies [24] .Some later used variables such as the presence of similar languages, shared religious beliefs, etc. to measure cultural differences (Schulze, 1999; Marvasti & Canterberry, 2010, etc.) [25][26] .Nisbett et al. ( 2001) argue that because differences in social systems make Eastern and Western cultures significantly different in their systems of thought, the perceived novelty and usefulness of an idea are perceived and assessed based on cultural differences in perception (Mc Namee, 2010) and thus its overall quality.

The structure of cultural novelty
In terms of the literature, in the decades since cultural novelty was proposed, researchers have not yet proposed a more nuanced dimension, which is generally considered to be a single dimension.In terms of research methods, factor analysis or cluster analysis is generally used to classify the sources of variables.
In 1980, Hofstede's scales on the four dimensions of power distance (PWR), individualism/collectivism (IND), masculinity/femininity (MAS), and uncertainty avoidance (UA) in the host country, and the 'long-term orientation/short-term orientation' dimension added in 2001 [14,20] , although giving specific questions, were not really a precursor to the concept of cultural novelty.Torbitorn's (1982) one-dimensional questionnaire on cultural resilience was a precursor to the measurement of cultural novelty.It was not until 1989 when Black and Stephen adopted Torbiorn's research and proposed eight items to measure cultural novelty, such as weather and housing conditions, that the academic community began to measure cultural novelty in a single dimension. [9]thers, such as Chao et al. (2017), argue that cultural novelty is commonly assessed based on factors such as customs, values, communication styles, and business practices, but do not give detailed measures of these factors [12] .

Cultural novelty scales and measures
As it relates to the development of diagnostic tools, researchers often focus on the measurement of variables.In terms of research orientation, this is generally done through both an empirical and a theoretical-empirical approach.
1) Cultural Novelty Scale In 1989, Black and Stephen built on the Torbiorn Cultural Toughness Scale by proposing to measure cultural novelty using eight items such as weather and housing conditions.These items provide a high-level overview of cultural adaptation in various aspects of everyday life.The original questionnaire was a five-point Likert scale describing the degree of cultural similarity between the expatriate target country and the United States.The reliability of the scale was reported to be 0.64 and the mean score of expatriates' perceived cultural novelty was 3.93 [9] .Validation of cultural novelty scale by other scholars can be seen at table 2. Stewart [10] 1991 The scale alpha is equal to 0.75 2 TanIng Bean [16] 2013 The research reliability coefficient is 0.729, the statistical results are X² /df=1.529,RMSEA=0.052, and other fitting indices are greater than 0.90, indicating good questionnaire validity.3  Zeyu Wang [15] 2013 The Cronbach's value of this scale was verified to be 0.789.4 Je Zhou [18] 2020 Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the questionnaire, and the conclusion was that the internal fit value of cultural novelty was completely in line with the standard.The standardized factor loading values of all questions in the questionnaire exceeded 0.5, and the α coefficient of the total scale was 0.91.2) Cultural Novelty Questionnaire Stroh et al. (1994) [27] developed a single-item cultural novelty questionnaire to measure the cultural novelty of expatriate managers (as rated by HCN managers).The item was: "In your opinion, does your general manager have difficulty adapting to the local culture?"The scale was significantly correlated (r=0.151,p001N=32) with the expatriate managers' own cultural novelty scores ("How difficult is it to adapt to the currently assigned host culture?" (1=not at all difficult to 4=very difficult), and the reliability of the single-item scale) needs to be debated more.
3) Cultural Resilience Questionnaire Torbitorn (1982) explored measures of cultural hardiness in terms of dissatisfaction with job satisfaction, stress levels, health care, housing standards, recreation, food, and co-worker skills.Black  (1992) used cultural hardiness to describe cultural transfer as particularly difficult.And asks: is there such a thing as a situation where transferring from some culture to another specific culture is usually painful, regardless of the degree of cultural similarity?He argues that this question and a range of subsidiary questions can be examined in future research.Its measure of cultural resilience was based on responses to the following item: "How difficult was it to adapt to the culture of the country in which you are currently moving internationally?" Responses were selected based on a 4-point scale ranging from very difficult to not difficult at all.4) Hofstede's Culture Scale In 1980, Hofstede [14] developed a scale on four dimensions of host country power distance (PWR), individualism/collectivism (IND), masculinity/femininity (MAS), and uncertainty avoidance (UA).Jeffrey, Maurizio (2002) [28] used this scale to measure the degree of cultural novelty of expatriates in international companies.Glenn et al. (1993) [29] study concluded that interaction adjustment was significantly lower when cultural novelty was high (r=-0.27).Conversely, and contrary to expectations, general life adjustment was positively related to cultural novelty.This means that when cultural differences with the home country were highest, the expatriates sampled here reported greater general life adjustment.

Cultural Novelty in Relation to Related Constructs
It is generally accepted in academic circles that cultural novelty plays a role in adapting to the host country environment, as the more different a person is between their home and host cultures, the more cultural learning they need to undertake to adapt, a logic-based on Bandura (1977) [30] social learning theory.However, there are also empirical findings that show that Westerners have a higher degree of cultural novelty than overseas Chinese, but show better socio-cultural adaptation, especially in terms of work adaptation [31] .Therefore, what exactly influences the degree of cultural novelty of individuals?This is a focal point of interest for researchers.

Cross-cultural adaptation
Starting with the early work of Torbiörn (1982) [3] , the novelty of culture has often been studied in expatriate management, especially as a precursor to cross-cultural adjustment.Usually, such studies use the intuitive logic that there is psychological discomfort and adaptation difficulties in perceiving culture.The correlation between cultural novelty and cross-cultural adaptability see table 3. Black [9] 1989 Proposed no significant association between cultural novelty and previous international experience, hypothesized to be related to both spouses' general adjustment and interactional adjustment, but only to overall adjustment.Results revealed a lack of significant relationship between cultural novelty and interactive adjustment.Two possible explanations ultimately emerged.First, the novelty of a culture may be manifested most directly in general items such as food, living conditions, and medical facilities, whereas the novelty of a culture is not directly manifested in interactions with host country nationals and reported cultural novelty Positively related to the adjustment of social conditions 2 Bhaskar-Shrinivas [32] 2005 Evidence suggests that high levels of cultural novelty are negatively related to expatriate adaptation and adjustment 3 Jan Selmer [33] 2006 An analysis of the correlational effects of cultural novelty and sociocultural adaptation also reported similar results, with cultural novelty not being associated with any of the three sociocultural adaptation variables.4  Jie Qin [34] 2009 Using black(1989) [34] Cultural novelty measurement tool, research confirms that psychological adaptation has no relationship with cultural novelty.5  Lijuan Lu [35] 2010 Research suggests that cultural novelty is negatively related to sociocultural adaptation (a higher score on the cultural novelty scale in the study indicates greater cultural differences) and positively related to psychological adaptation.6 Guofeng Wang [15] 2013 In a survey of young Chinese scholars who were sent to visit other countries, it was concluded that cultural novelty is related to high cross-cultural adaptability.If cross-cultural adaptability is too high or too low, cultural novelty will be lower.The two are inversely related.Inverted U-shaped relationship.7  Jie Zou [18] 2020 reported the same results as black, with cultural novelty and sociocultural adaptation being significantly positively correlated.

Psychological capital
Connie Chan (2014) [17] states in his study that cultural novelty and psychological capital are positively correlated, but does not specifically expand on the extent of their correlation.Jay Zhou (2020) [18] argues that cultural novelty is significantly and positively related to psychological capital and that psychological capital plays a moderating role in cultural novelty and sociocultural adjustment.Cultural novelty plays a moderating role between psychological capital and academic burnout.International students with low levels of cultural novelty have difficulties in accepting and adapting to new environments and tend to adopt a negative attitude when encountering problems, which may affect their attitudes and emotions towards learning.The higher the level of cultural novelty, the more positive and optimistic the international student will be in adapting to the environment, thus weakening the feeling of burnout.

Creativity
Exposure of expatriates to cultural differences has the potential to create cultural novelty that can promote individual creativity (e. ).This implies that experiencing cultural differences can unconstraint thinking and images from cultural constraints and thus promote creativity and information related to socialisation processes in the family culture (Maddux et al., 2010).Accordingly, cultural experience of difference appears to be crucial in acquiring new ideas and concepts and destabilising conventional knowledge.FER and Grav in 2012 [36] demonstrated that the positive link between maintaining an optimistic personality at work and creativity can be counteracted in cultural contexts which are perceived as too novel, even after controlling for the individual's level of work adjustment.
Sebastian et al. (2020) [37] explored the impact of positive affect on expatriate creativity and perceived performance using the Black and Stephen scale: What is the role of perceived cultural novelty?While PA and perceived cultural novelty creativity produced positive primary effects, their interaction led to a decline in creativity.This finding is indeed surprising because of the expected synergistic effects (e.g.Leung & Chiu, 2008)

Cultural identity
According to Berry et al.'s cultural identity theory, individuals internalise and develop a sense of belonging to the culture and cultural group they belong to in order to acquire, maintain and innovate their own culture.This includes identification with social values, religious beliefs, customs, language and art (Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006) [38] .The process of enhancing cultural novelty can be seen as a process of identifying with the customs, religious beliefs and language and culture of a foreign culture, which takes place in a field of contact, collision and comparison between different cultures, in which one acquires, maintains and innovates one's own culture and makes the two cultures co-exist harmoniously.The more inclusive students are of a foreign culture, the more they will be able to identify with it, and the more they will be able to adopt a positive and optimistic attitude when they encounter problems in adapting to their environment and overcoming difficulties.Black and Porter (1991) found that US managers in the US and US expatriate managers in Hong Kong exhibited very similar managerial behaviours, but that these managerial behaviours were not related to the performance of US (expatriate) managers in Hong Kong, although the same behaviours were positively correlated in the US.Thus, the effectiveness of expatriate leadership behaviour is likely to be bound by the specific cultural values, beliefs, and normative behaviours that are considered appropriate in a given foreign cultural context.In other words, the more novel the foreign culture, the less effective the same leadership behaviours tend to be.

Demographic factors
1) Housing conditions Evidence from Gregersen et al. (1997) [39] shows that cultural novelty and social status are strongly associated with adaptation to interactions with home nationals among returnees.Cultural novelty and housing conditions are closely related to adaptation to interactions with home country nationals.
2) Number of friends in the host country Evidence from Connie Chen (2014) shows significant differences in cultural novelty among international students coming to China in terms of education, gender, number of Chinese friends [18] , age, and length of stay in China [17] .Regarding the effect of the number of Chinese friends, Zhou J.'s evidence also reported the same results as Connie Chen, i.e., cultural novelty was also smaller for those with a higher number of friends in the host country [18] .
3) Gender Gender differences were shown to be greater for males than females in terms of scores, with males perceiving less cultural distance than females.Evidence from Zhou J. (2020) reported the opposite result, with evidence showing that the difference in cultural novelty between international students by gender was also highly significant, calculating p < 0.05, with female international students scoring higher in cultural novelty than male international students, suggesting that male international students do not adapt as well as female international students in terms of adapting to cultural differences stand [18] .It can therefore be speculated that cultural novelty may have a bidirectional effect result in terms of gender.
4) Education and age Differences in academic qualifications showed that graduate students had less cultural novelty than those with lower qualifications.After testing the age and length of stay variables for international students, Connie Chan (2014) found that international students aged 24-30 had significantly higher cultural novelty scores than those under 24, i.e. perceived less of a gap between the culture of the host country and that of their home country.This indicates that cultural novelty becomes less as experience increases, time spent in China increases, and familiarity with the environment grows.Connie Chan also reports that international students who have been in China for months perceive the greatest cultural differences.

Satisfaction
Wilczewsk (2022) [40] reported a significant effect of cultural novelty on international students' adjustment and satisfaction.Riki Takeuchi et al. (2021) [41] used an item developed by Stroh et al.  (1994)  [42] to measure the cultural novelty of expatriate managers (as rated by HCN managers) and found that decision autonomy and cultural novelty as weighted variables influenced leadership behaviour and the relationship between overall job satisfaction of HCN managers.

Learning Burnout
Evidence from Zhou J (2020) showed a significant negative correlation between cultural novelty and dimensions and learning burnout and dimensions (r = -0.338,p < 0.01), suggesting that cultural novelty is a single dimension [18] .

Selection of survey sample 1) Age level
In previous studies, some researchers have been more focused on controlling age when selecting their samples, which has led to less representative results.Future studies could be more representative by spreading out the ages of respondents.
2) Individual and group level Some researchers are still studying cultural novelty at the individual level, but as the study of cultural novelty at the organisational and group levels and beyond grows, the links and differences between cultural novelty at the organisational and group levels and the individual level will become more apparent.This will help to understand how cultural novelty affects organisations and groups as a whole and will open up new areas for future research.This will be a meaningful and challenging area of research that deserves more energy and attention to develop richer theoretical and empirical research.
3) Geographical area Much of the research on cultural novelty is narrowly sampled and future research evidence from different countries should be reported, thereby refining findings and deepening research knowledge, and should deepen the relationship between country and cultural novelty and the impact on crosscultural adaptation [17] .

1) Horizontal and vertical research dimensions
Many researchers' data are cross-sectional in nature, thus creating limitations.Specifically, crosssectional data structures make it difficult to make reasonable causal inferences about the relationships measured by the variables in the study.Cultural novelty is often investigated as a non-work factor influencing cross-cultural adjustment, which is a process that occurs over time, and longitudinal studies yield a richer source of data in which different patterns of adjustment can be identified and compared over time.Considering a combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies allows for a more detailed analysis of the relationships between variables.
2) Questionnaire level Most researchers will collect data through self-report questionnaires and this single method variance may affect the results.The social desirability aspect of single-method bias often leads to response range compression, so researchers need to assess the data collected to determine if there is single-method variance bias.These survey data should also be directly tested for single-method bias through the Harman one-way test.
Secondly, the self-administered questionnaire is highly subjective.Future researchers should add qualitative research methods such as interview methods and experimental methods to understand the real situation of the subjects from more perspectives.

Deepening the connotations and dimensions of cultural novelty
1) Scale development From the scales developed so far, researchers have not distinguished between more detailed dimensions of the variables of cultural novelty, but simply added up the question items.In order to have a clearer understanding of the concept of cultural novelty, researchers should subdivide the items, clearly define the connotation of cultural novelty, and expand the extension of cultural novelty.

3) Variable intervention studies
The moderating effect of specific dimensions and the moderating effect of individual demographic variables may miss some information and it is necessary to A more comprehensive analysis of [17] was conducted in subsequent studies.At present the researcher's perception of cultural novelty is a single dimension, and as research into the influence of relevant variables progresses, it is believed that the researcher will identify other measurement dimensions that influence cultural novelty.

In-depth exploration of the mechanisms that shape cultural novelty
The causes of cultural novelty have not yet been studied in sufficient depth for researchers to have a clear understanding of the sources, and such research should be increased in the future.

Strengthening pre-trip training
The results of the study suggest that companies sending expatriate employees overseas may face a similar degree of adjustment difficulties, regardless of the degree of cultural novelty.The practical implication of this finding for international business companies is therefore that cultural preparation and training is not only useful when assigning expatriate managers to foreign locations with a high degree of cultural novelty, but can also be applied to host countries with a low degree of cultural novelty.In other words, business expatriates may benefit from cross-cultural training regardless of where they are assigned.This could be an important takeaway [42] .
When expatriating to a country with a similar culture, companies can increase their pre-departure efforts to remind expatriates of the pitfalls of feeling overconfident.Training can also focus on the subtle rather than obvious differences between home and host cultures, such as how to motivate employees so that which management models and reward systems are most effective.Expatriates travelling to similar cultures would also benefit from communication training that includes not only spoken language but also non-verbal forms of differentiating between high and low levels.In addition, communication workshops and contextual culture may be beneficial, even for the same-language destinations, to familiarise expatriates with the spoken and other expressions that contribute to effective cross-cultural interaction and adaptation [43] .

Deepening the cultural identity of the host country
Deepening the cultural identity of the host country helps to reduce the degree of cultural novelty in the country of residence and reduces the barriers to cultural adaptation.It is important for travellers to identify with the customs, language, and religion of the host culture from their own perspective.They should also be able to innovate their home culture through contact with other cultures and achieve a harmonious coexistence between the home and host cultures.We need to adopt a positive and optimistic attitude to adapt to the host country environment, try to overcome cultural barriers and difficulties, and strengthen your own sense of inclusiveness towards the host country culture, so that you will develop a sense of belonging in the process of identifying with the host country culture.

The host country should establish a cross-cultural training system
Black et al. (1991) [44] argue that cross-cultural training is crucial to the success of sojourners.Host country managers should provide travellers with practical information about local living conditions; help travellers to learn about local politics, economics, and culture; train travellers to access information about local cultural awareness; and develop travellers' ability to combine cognitive and behavioural techniques for practical learning activities.Based on these aspects, a sound system of cross-cultural training in the host country is established.

Conclusion
The concept of cultural novelty has been the subject of extensive research since the 1970s and 1980s.It initially emerged as an extension of the concept of 'cultural distance,' which focuses on the gap between the culture of one's home country and the culture of the host country.The perception of cultural differences between these two cultures forms the basis of cultural novelty, which is seen as a more nuanced and individualized concept compared to cultural distance.Scholars have explored various subtypes of cultural novelty, including cultural distance, cultural toughness, and cultural differences.Cultural distance is measured based on cultural dimensions, cultural clusters, and perceived cultural differences.Cultural toughness, on the other hand, reflects the difficulty of adapting to specific cultures, while cultural differences consider the impact of various factors such as language, religion, and social systems.
Research on cultural novelty has led to the development of different scales and measures.The Cultural Novelty Scale, introduced by Black and Stephen, is a prominent tool for assessing cultural novelty, while others have used single-item questionnaires and existing cultural scales like Hofstede's Culture Scale.These measures have undergone validation to ensure their reliability and effectiveness.Cultural novelty plays a crucial role in cross-cultural adaptation.Expatriates and international students who perceive greater cultural novelty often face challenges in adjusting to their host country's culture, particularly in terms of sociocultural adaptation.However, the relationship between cultural novelty and adaptation is not always straightforward, as Westerners have been shown to exhibit higher cultural novelty but better work adaptation than overseas Chinese.
Cultural novelty also intersects with related constructs, such as psychological capital and creativity.Studies have indicated that there is a positive correlation between cultural novelty and psychological capital, with psychological capital moderating the relationship between cultural novelty and sociocultural adjustment.Cultural novelty has the potential to enhance creativity by exposing individuals to different cultural perspectives and unconstraining their thinking.As research on cultural novelty continues to evolve, this concept offers valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities presented by cross-cultural experiences.Understanding the subtypes, structure, and impact of cultural novelty can aid individuals and organizations in effectively navigating cultural differences and fostering successful cross-cultural interactions.Further research in this area is needed to provide a more comprehensive understanding of cultural novelty and its implications for various domains of life and work.

Table 2 :
Validation of cultural novelty scale

Table 3 :
Correlation verification results between cultural novelty and cross-cultural adaptability Number Researcher Time Results 1