Measuring sustainable development - the creative economy perspective

ABSTRACT

World literature presents a variety of approaches to measuring the creative economy at global, national and regional levels, but so far not enough attention has been paid to the issue of sustainability of creative economies. Creative economies do not rely heavily on natural resources which means that their negative impact on the climate is relatively weaker than in the case of other industries. The measurement of sustainable development is an important contribution to the overall efforts in fighting the climate change. Statistical figures show that the share of the creative economy in GDP of the most developed countries is steadily increasing. Therefore, it is legitimate to analyse the sustainable development issues not only through the lenses of utilization of natural resources and environmental issues but also to look at the sustainability challenge for the creative economies. The growth of creative industries may be hindered by scarcity and improper utilization of resouces, but the main threat to the sustainability is the scarcity of intangible resources and goods such as ideas, freedom of thought, leadership, tolerance, quality of education, etc. Based on a literature review, we endeavoured to investigate the sustainability issues which are relevant specifically for the creative economy. In particular, we were interested in the role of local government in supporting the growth of creative economies. This study contributes to the literature in the sense that it provides understanding on how to assess the impact of local government on the sustainability of creative economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative economy
• creative industries
• sustainable development at regional level
• economic growth
• intangible resources

Acknowledgments

This paper has been funded by Polish National Science Centre (grant number: 2013/09/B/HS4/00476); ‘Kapitał intelektualny powiatów polskich’ (Intellectual Capital of Polish County Counties). The project is carried out by the University of Economics and Business in Poznań.

Author Contributions

This manuscript is the output from the dissertation both authors have worked on.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Narodowe Centrum Nauki [2013/09/B/HS4/00476].