Abstract

Factors Which Influence the Growth of Creative Industries: Cross-section Analysis in China With the more and more important roles of creative economy, its research has become one of the major fields in economic development. The creative economy has the potential to generate income and jobs while promoting social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development. As a developing country, China is also in need of developing the creative economy to adjust the economic structure and realize the sustainable development. In this paper, we examined the factors which influence the growth of creative industries in China through the cross-section analysis of 23 regional data in 2007. Four main factors were examined in this multi-regression model, that is, GDP per capita, the number of higher education institutions, the number of students enrolled in higher education institution and the number of patents.The statistical analysis found that the model's fit is quite good and 69% of dependent variable is explained by the model. Specifically, there are three sub-conclusions. Firstly, there is not a positive relationship between GDP per capita and dependent variable; on the contrary, there is a weak negative relationship in this model. We infer that it is because of the stage of economic development. China heavily depends on the development of the second industry in the process of industrializing. Secondly, there is no linear relationship, in this model, between the number of higher education institutions and the dependent variable. We infer that it is mainly due to the differences between the higher education institutions, such as scales and qualities, etc. Thirdly, there is enough evidence to conclude that the number of students enrolled in higher education institution and the dependent variable are linearly related; the number of patents and the ratio of creative industries are linearly related, as well. They represent the important roles of talents and technology in the development of creative industries.