Industrial Linkages and Digital Synergy: The Input-Output Analysis of Chinese Cultural Industries

Abstract

This article probes the industrial linkages and corresponding structures of Chinese cultural industries from the perspective of demand and supply by combining input-output analysis with social network analysis. It finds that the significant economic contribution of Chinese cultural industries lies in creating productive demand for other sectors. Benefitting from industrial standardization, cultural manufacturing industries possess intensive demand and supply linkages and directly participate in national economic activities. The demand and supply linkages of cultural-content industries present internal complexity and are generally deficient in reflexivity. Digital cultural industries, spanning structural holes, show synergistic structures in the demand and supply linkages. These findings offset the paucity of industrial linkage analysis in extant research on cultural industries while unveiling the linkage structures of cultural industries, providing evidence for policymakers and practitioners to effectively guide the development of cultural industries.

Keywords:

• Digital synergy
• industrial linkages
• input-output analysis
• reflexivity
• social network analysis

Acknowledgements

I thank the editor and three anonymous referees for suggestions that helped to improve this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term cultural industries has similarities with creative industries, cultural and creative industries, etc., and this article does not make a distinction between them.

Additional information

Funding

This study is funded by the program on Research on the Era Background and Realistic Approaches to Promoting Cultural Confidence and Selfimprovement (23ZDA081) and the program on the World Landscape and China’s Road from the Perspective of Cultural Cooperation Competition, Cultural Confidence and Self-improvement (IGUC23A002