Porous chitosan scaffold is used for tissue engineering and drug delivery, but is limited as a scaffold material due to its mechanical weakness, which restrains cell adhesion on the surface. In this study, a chemical reagent (citrate) and a natural reagent (genipin) are used as cross-linkers for the formation of chitosan-based films. Nanoindentation technique with a continuous stiffness measurement system is particularly applied on the porous scaffold surface to examine the characteristic modulus and nanohardness of a porous scaffold surface. The characteristic modulus of a genipin-cross-linked chitosan surface is approximate to 2.325 GPa, which is significantly higher than that of an uncross-linked one (approximate to 1.292 GPa). The cell-scaffold surface interaction is assessed. The cell morphology and results of an MTS assay of 3T3-fibroblast cells of a genipin-cross-linked chitosan surface indicate that the enhancement of mechanical properties induced cell adhesion and proliferation on the modified porous scaffold surface. The pore size and mechanical properties of porous chitosan film can be tuned for specific applications such as tissue regeneration. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.