Behavioral Insights into Cultural Entrepreneurship: The Importance of Identity and Passion

In contrast to more traditional approaches used to study entrepreneurship, this work applies a behavioral approach to understand the motivations and actions of artists and creative practitioners who navigate art worlds and markets. Our examination of cultural entrepreneurship focuses upon how psychological phenomena including role identity, motivation, contextual factors and passion serve to drive cultural enterprising actions. Unlike traditional approaches to entrepreneurship which often focuses on profit and treat the presence of entrepreneurship within the economy as exogenous determined, a behavioral approach delves into intrinsic and extrinsic rewards as key motivators for entrepreneurial intentions and action. Applying behavioral approaches to cultural entrepreneurship brings not only more realistic assumptions to models used to predict and understand behavior, but also provides vital insights that can inform policy-making and initiatives designed to foster and promote the cultural and creative industries that reposition the artist to be in greater proximity to the market.