Financing the cultural and creative industries through crowdfunding: the role of national cultural dimensions and policies

The trend towards digitalisation and technological innovation has reshaped the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) by changing the existing funding models and structures. The aim of this article is to explore the impact of cultural dimensions and policies on the adoption of reward-based crowdfunding as a new form of finance for firms in the CCIs in 12 different European countries during the 2015-2019 period. Our results show that national cultural dimensions and policies significantly affect the demand for cultural and creative crowdfunding. Specifically, the adoption of crowdfunding is broader in individualistic countries and in societies characterised by higher uncertainty avoidance, indulgence, short-term orientation, and lower levels of discrimination between genders. Furthermore, we find that the liberal welfare state model, characterised by limited government interference, market orientation, privatisation and a focus on self-responsibility, and the Southern European welfare model, based on a weak and inefficient state, increase the adoption of crowdfunding in the CCIs. The presence of a central ministry with cultural competence also increases the adoption of crowdfunding in the CCIs. Our findings show a U-shaped relationship between European grants and the demand for crowdfunding, mainly driven by a high or low European involvement within these sectors. We also identify a moderation effect of EU grants on the relationship between cultural dimensions and crowdfunding adoption, suggesting that the magnitude of this relationship depends on the amount of EU grants awarded in a specific country. As a robustness check, we run a set of Poisson regressions with correlated random effects (CREs), confirming our main results.