What Drives the Development and Sustainable Growth of Cultural Nonprofits—Chinese Province-Level Evidence

Abstract

Although cultural nonprofits play an increasingly important role in the provision of public cultural services in China, there are obvious regional differences in the development of cultural nonprofits. What factors affect this regional difference? This paper builds a theoretical model to explain the regional differences from the perspectives of regional demand, resource supply, and agglomeration effects. Data from the 31 provinces in mainland China from 2010 to 2015 are used to empirically examine the research model. The results indicate that demand for heterogeneity, financial resources, and human resources have positive effects on the size of cultural social organizations, and that there are also significant agglomeration effects with respect to the sustainable growth of cultural nonprofits; however, these findings vary across types of Chinese nonprofits (social organizations, private non-enterprise organizations, and foundations). These findings improve our understanding of regional differences of Chinese cultural nonprofits and have important policy implications for governments to promote the development of cultural nonprofits.