Understanding the influence of local government strategies targeting creative industries in Bandung, Indonesia, using Agent-Based Modelling
Summary
Creative industries are blooming in the Global-South (Fahmi, McCann, Koster, 2017) as they are potential drivers of job creation, innovation, and social inclusion (UNCTAD, 2010; Lazzeretti & Vecco, 2018). This has caused Indonesia to embrace creative industries and to implement policies focused on the development of its creative industries. These policies are often aimed at specific areas, like cities. One city that embraces creative industries is Bandung. The implementation of such policies makes it of importance to policy makers to understand to what extent the policy strategies ensure that the policy goals are achieved. Therefore, this study aims to assess the impacts of local government strategies on the development of creative industries in Bandung, Indonesia.
Three research questions were set up to guide the process: “What are the policy actions of the local government policy strategies that are used to stimulate the development of creative industries?”, “What characteristics of creative firms and their environment are of importance for the development of creative firms?”, and “What is the impact of the local government strategies on the development of creative firms?” To achieve the research aim, an agent-based model was set up and a scenario-based analysis was performed. Survey data and literature were used to set up the agent-based model. Three of the most recent and relevant local government policies aimed at creative industries in Bandung have been reviewed to set up scenarios for the analysis. This led to the baseline scenario, the industrial centres development scenario and the tourism development scenario. An average nearest neighbour analysis and a Moran’s I analysis were conducted to analyse the spatial patterns. Lastly, the number of bankrupt creative firms have been analysed.
The scenario-analysis showed that the implementation of the policy actions caused clustering of creative firms. In all scenarios, this clustering was based on their main product. The tourism scenario also showed clustering based on the customer target. In addition, the results showed that the policy actions that are directly aimed at creative firms, e.g., offer financing and workshops, impacted the development of creative firms as they caused more creative firms to establish and less creative firms to go bankrupt. The policy actions that are indirectly aimed at creative firms, e.g., establishing a festival and developing creative tourism programmes, impacted the development of creative firms as they caused more firms to go bankrupt. This research showed that the following policy actions are deemed the best for creative industry development: improving financing access, providing financial subsidies, offering training, and offering workshops. These policy actions are recommended to be included in the policy strategies aimed at the development of creative industries.