The Roles of Creative Industries and Government Support in Elevating the Global Standing of Thailand’s Northeastern Region

Abstract

The purposes of this research article were 1) to study the level of entrepreneurs’ perceptions regarding the creative industries and government support in elevating the global standing; 2) to investigate the influence of four creative industry sectors and government support in elevating the global standing; and 3) to explore the additional influence of government support after controlling for the influence of the creative industry. The study was grounded in the conceptual frameworks of Soft Power (Nye, 2004) and Collaborative Governance (Ansell & Gash, 2008). This research was a quantitative research. The sample group consisted of 497 creative industry entrepreneurs from 4 sectors—food, tourism, art, and music—across 5 provinces in the Northeastern region, selected from a population of 8,460 using multi-stage random sampling. Data were collected via a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire, which demonstrated an Index of Item-Objective Congruence (IOC) of 0.50 or higher and a reliability coefficient of 0.96. Data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics and hierarchical multiple regression. The research findings revealed that 1) entrepreneurs had a perception of the creative industries and their global standing at the highest level ( = 4.34 and 4.37, respectively), while the perception of government promotion was at a high level ( = 3.78); 2) music exerted the strongest positive influence (β = .506, p < .001), followed by food (β = .277, p < .001). Regarding government promotion, collaboration and participation had a positive influence (β = .234, p = .006), whereas local-level support had a negative influence (β = -.170, p = .032); 3) government promotion continued to exert a significant additional influence even after controlling for the effects of the creative industries (ΔR² = .008, p = .025). The results suggested that elevating global standing required collaborative governance mechanisms; promotion limited to the local level—lacking integration with national strategies—posed a significant obstacle to international competitiveness.