Digital transformation is often framed as a question of technology: whether a company can afford new systems, recruit engineers or modernise its operations. New research suggests that the cultural environment surrounding a business may matter too.
A peer-reviewed study published on 3 October 2026 in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications examined Chinese A-share listed companies over the period from 2009 to 2023. The researchers found that firms operating in stronger local creative-culture environments showed higher levels of corporate digital transformation. Their analysis also identified three pathways that may help explain the relationship: greater research and development investment, lower financing constraints and a stronger local concentration of digital talent.
The result adds an unusual dimension to the digital-transformation debate. Instead of treating digitalisation purely as an internal management decision, the study asks whether the surrounding cultural ecosystem can create conditions that make technological change easier for firms.
Why local culture could matter to digital business change
Companies do not innovate in isolation. They operate within cities and regions that differ in access to skilled workers, financing, ideas, institutions and opportunities for collaboration. Creative industries can contribute to that environment by concentrating designers, media professionals, technology workers and other knowledge-intensive occupations in the same places.
The researchers focused on what they describe as the local creative culture environment. Their central proposition was that a more vibrant creative setting can influence how firms approach digital transformation, even when the firms themselves are not necessarily creative-industry businesses.
This matters because corporate digital transformation is broader than buying software. It can involve redesigning processes, incorporating digital technologies into products and services, changing organisational structures and developing new ways of creating value. Such changes often require experimentation, investment and access to specialised skills.
Fifteen years of listed-company evidence
The study used archival and secondary data covering Chinese A-share listed firms from 2009 through 2023. That gives the analysis a long observation window spanning a period in which China’s digital economy and creative-industry infrastructure both expanded substantially.
Rather than surveying managers about whether they believed their local culture was innovative, the researchers linked firm-level information with measures of the surrounding creative environment. This approach allowed them to examine the association between local conditions and companies’ digital transformation across firms and over time.
The study reports a positive relationship between a vibrant local creative culture environment and corporate digital transformation. Importantly, the researchers did not stop at the headline association. They examined mechanisms that could plausibly connect the external environment with changes inside firms.
R&D, finance and digital talent emerged as key pathways
Three channels stood out in the analysis.
First, firms in stronger creative-culture environments showed higher research and development investment. R&D can provide a practical bridge between exposure to new ideas and actual technological implementation. A business may be surrounded by creative activity, but transformation still requires resources to test, adapt and integrate technologies.
Second, the relationship operated partly through lower financing constraints. Digital transformation can require substantial upfront spending while benefits emerge only later. Firms facing difficulty obtaining finance may therefore postpone projects even when managers recognise their value. The findings suggest that the local environment may be associated with conditions that reduce this barrier.
Third, regional digital talent agglomeration helped explain the link. This mechanism is especially intuitive. Companies attempting to digitise need people who can develop, implement and manage digital systems. When those skills are concentrated locally, firms may face lower search costs and gain easier access to specialised knowledge.
Taken together, these pathways suggest that creative culture may be relevant not simply because it makes a city appear innovative, but because it is associated with concrete resources that firms need to change.
The relationship was not equally strong for every company
The researchers also found meaningful differences across types of firms and regional settings.
The positive relationship was more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises than among state-owned firms. One possible interpretation is that private firms may be more exposed to competitive pressure and therefore more responsive to local sources of knowledge, talent and finance. State-owned firms can operate under different financing, governance and policy conditions, which may reduce the relative importance of the surrounding creative environment.
The effect was also stronger in regions with weaker Confucian cultural traditions. The authors treat this as evidence that broader cultural context can shape how readily firms translate creative local conditions into organisational change. This finding should be interpreted carefully, however. Regional cultural measures simplify complex social traditions and do not imply that one cultural tradition is inherently more or less innovative.
A further difference appeared according to leadership composition. Firms with a higher proportion of female executives showed a stronger relationship between local creative culture and digital transformation. The result does not establish that female executives cause firms to digitise more quickly. Instead, it identifies a statistically meaningful heterogeneity pattern within the study’s empirical setting that warrants further investigation.
Digital transformation may be partly an ecosystem outcome
The broader implication is that policies designed to encourage digital transformation may be too narrow when they focus only on technology subsidies, broadband infrastructure or individual firms.
A region’s creative ecosystem may complement those interventions. Creative and cultural spaces can potentially contribute to networks in which technical knowledge, design capabilities and new business ideas circulate. If those environments also attract digital workers and encourage investment, their economic effects may extend beyond the creative industries themselves.
For managers, the study points toward a similar conclusion. Location can shape the pool of resources available for transformation. Firms deciding where to establish innovation teams, recruit digital specialists or build partnerships may benefit from considering the surrounding creative and knowledge ecosystem rather than evaluating only conventional technology clusters.
What the findings do not prove
The findings should not be read as proof that opening a creative park will automatically cause nearby companies to digitise. The research is based on observational archival data rather than a randomised experiment. Even with empirical tests designed to investigate the relationship, unobserved regional or firm-level factors can complicate causal interpretation.
The setting also matters. The sample consists of Chinese A-share listed companies, which are generally larger, more formalised and better resourced than the many small and privately held businesses operating in the economy. The relationship may differ for start-ups, microenterprises or firms in countries with different financial and institutional systems.
Measures of digital transformation and local creative culture also necessarily reduce complex phenomena to empirical indicators. A company can transform digitally in very different ways, from automating manufacturing to redesigning customer channels, while a creative environment can encompass multiple industries and forms of cultural activity.
Finally, the identified mechanisms should be interpreted as evidence about pathways consistent with the data, not as a claim that R&D, financing and talent are the only reasons local creative culture might matter.
A wider view of what enables firms to digitise
The study’s main contribution is to shift attention outward. Corporate digital transformation is usually discussed as something that happens inside the boundaries of a company. This research suggests that the surrounding cultural environment may be part of the infrastructure that makes transformation possible.
Across Chinese listed firms observed from 2009 to 2023, stronger local creative culture was positively associated with digital transformation, with R&D investment, financing constraints and digital-talent concentration helping to explain the pattern. The association was also stronger in particular organisational and cultural contexts.
That does not mean culture can substitute for technology investment. It suggests something more practical: successful digital transformation may depend on both. Firms need technologies and capital, but they also need ecosystems capable of supplying ideas, skills and connections that allow those resources to be used effectively.
Source Information
Study: Jiang, L., Pan, Y., Song, Y., Xiao, Y. et al. “Local creative culture environment and corporate digital transformation: evidence from cultural and creative industry parks in China.”
Journal: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Published: 3 October 2026
DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09270-w
