A Study On The Competitiveness Of Animation Industry Clusters

Ever since 2004, with the acceleration of the construction of Chinese animation industry, Chinese animation industry clusters have developed rapidly and become a new growth point in economy. However, the development in Chinese animation industry clusters is also confronted with some problems, such as repeated construction and resource wasting. How to upgrade the competitiveness of animation industry, consolidate and improve the status of Chinese animation industry in domestic and foreign markets, and better develop animation industry has become an important research subject for both academia and government agencies. Until now, domestic scholars have done little research on animation industry clusters while some scholars have blindly copied those theories in manufacturing industry clusters in animation industry. Besides, there is little research on the competiveness of animation industry clusters, let alone a systematic analysis or an empirical research on the factors that affect the competiveness of animation industry clusters. Therefore, constructing an evaluation index system of the competitiveness of animation industry clusters, and conducting an empirical analysis of Chinese animation industry clusters are theoretically and practically meaningful.This thesis firstly reviews domestic and foreign theories on industry clusters and relevant research achievement on creative industry clusters and animation industry clusters. Based on the characteristics of animation industry clusters and the current situation in the development of Chinese animation industry clusters and with the help of hierarchy analysis, my thesis constructs an evaluation index system for the competitiveness of animation industry clusters and holds that those factors that affect the competiveness of animation industry clusters mainly include those on the levels of enterprise, cluster network, and external environment. Factors on the first level include enterprise size, performance, innovation capability, and risk aversion abilities; factors on the second level include infrastructure construction, intermediary organizations, inter-enterprise competiveness and cooperation, and the openness of cluster network while factors on the third level include government support and local social and economic environment. The evaluation index system for the competiveness of animation industry clusters is composed of three first grade indexes, ten second grade indexes, thirty-three third grade indexes as well as the layer of factors that affect decision-making. With the help of the above indexes, my thesis calculates the competiveness of five animation industry bases in China, namely Shenyang Hunnan Animation Industry Base, Beijing Cultural and Creative Industry Cluster Zone, Hu'nan National Animation Game Industry Base, Changzhou National Animation Industry Base, and Shenzhen Yijing National Animation Industry Base.The empirical data in this thesis are obtained from the questionnaires and score reports distributed among government officials, entrepreneurs in animation industry bases, experts in industry cluster research, research fellows in cultural and creative industries, teachers for the animation major, investors in cultural and creative industries, and animation industry workers. All of the data are processed by computer simulation. Owing to the application of rough set model in calculating the indexes on different levels and the competiveness of the whole animation industry clusters, both the index system and data processing method are of great validity and operability. The result of this empirical research indicates that Beijing Cultural and Creative Industry Cluster Zone has the biggest competiveness power while Shenzhen National Animation Industry Base has the smallest. Among the first grade indexes, factors on the level of external environment and those on the level of cluster network have the strongest and the weakest influence respectively; besides, local social and economic environment, risk aversion ability, intermediary organizations, and the network openness of enterprise achievement rank first, second, third, fourth, and fifth in terms of their effects on the competiveness of animation industry clusters. In the last part of this thesis, based on the research result mentioned above, some policies that are expected to upgrade the competiveness of Chinese animation industry are put forward from the perspective of the levels of enterprise, cluster network, and external environment are listed.