Construct a comprehensive evaluation system of public cultural service level, and measure the public cultural service level of 31 provinces from 2011 to 2019 based on entropy method and comprehensive evaluation method. Based on this, the fixed effect model is used to empirically examine the influence of public cultural service level on residents’ cultural consumption expenditure, and at the same time, the quantile regression method is used to test the influence of public cultural service level on cultural consumption expenditure at different distributions of residents’ cultural consumption expenditure. The empirical results show that the level of public cultural services has a significant role in promoting residents’ cultural consumption expenditure, and the level of public cultural services is indeed a key factor in stimulating residents’ cultural consumption needs. In addition, the level of education, industrial structure and other factors have a significant promoting effect on the cultural consumption expenditure of residents, and the level of urbanization has a restraining effect on the cultural consumption expenditure of the residents.