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As a representative expression of Dunhuang music and dance culture, the dance drama Silk Road Flower Rain not only embodies the historical and cultural legacy of the ancient Silk Road but also functions as an important vehicle for transmitting traditional Chinese culture and reinforcing cultural confidence. This study quantifies the perceived social value of Silk Road Flower Rain using a penalized linear regression applied to Likert-scale survey data. We estimate standardized effects of community participation and cross-regional exchange on a composite outcome combining social identity and public engagement. Statistical inference for the ridge estimator is obtained via permutation- and bootstrap-based procedures with 10,000 resamples, producing two-sided 95% confidence intervals and family-wise-error-rate–adjusted p-values. Out-of-sample performance was evaluated by repeated 10-fold cross-validation (50 repetitions), yielding a mean CV R² of 0.90 (SD = 0.05) and a mean absolute error of 0.23 (SD = 0.04) on the 1–5 scale. Results indicate that all predictors have statistically significant positive effects on social value; social participation is identified as the primary driving factor, while youth cultural education emerges as a critical area in need of targeted improvement. Robustness checks using ordinal logistic regression confirm the consistency of coefficient directions and relative magnitudes across model specifications. Based on these findings, we propose a targeted optimization framework to enhance social value, including establishing a community–university–theater linkage mechanism to strengthen social participation; developing a curriculum–practice–digital integrated system to improve youth cultural education; and leveraging policy support and international exchange to broaden cultural influence. This research addresses a gap in the literature, which has predominantly emphasized art history and choreography while neglecting quantitative assessments of social value, and offers practical guidance for the sustainable transmission and enhancement of Dunhuang music and dance culture.