1 Introduction

As a response to the perpetually challenging funding environment in the arts and cultural sector, arts entrepreneurship, or artrepreneurship, has been proposed as an alternative funding source allowing an independent living from creative practice (e.g. Beckman 2007; Bridgstock 2013; Brown 2005; Henry 2007). Artrepreneurship is defined as the process of brining the fruits of artists’ creative endeavours to the market for commercial gain. It results from the blending of artists’ aesthetic and economic logics (Eikhof and Haunschild 2007) and encourages a more businesslike approach to creative production (Engelmann et al. 2012) to “translate creativity into money” (Brink 2011, p. 75).

Artrepreneurship has been advocated by governments as a career path for artists that educational institutions should promote (Carey and Naudin 2006; Pollard 2013): Successful commercialisation of creative ideas and practice requires particular skills and competencies that may, to an extent, be acquired. In response, entrepreneurial training as part of fine arts education aims to raise the professional prospects of artists by developing artists’ “more intangible, behavioral aspects of entrepreneurship” (Pollard 2013). Two approaches to artrepreneurship education exist, one aimed at the artist’s new venture creation, and the other at professional employment (Beckman 2007; Bridgstock 2013).

Artrepreneurship can benefit both the economic viability of the individual artist and the cultural industries more generally (Roberts 2012). For many artists wishing to make a living from their creative practice, entrepreneurism presents new opportunities that can sustain their creative careers. (Lingo and Tepper 2013, p. 337) describe artists as “masters of navigating across historically disparate domains” who increasingly must embrace “self-directed entrepreneurialism”.

Moreover, beyond the individual artist, the economic importance of the creative economy, i.e. goods and services based on creative intellectual capital, is considerable and rising. In the UK, for example, cultural industries contribute around 8% of GDP, employ around 6% of the workforce (Carey and Naudin 2006) and are rising faster than any other economic sector (Brown 2005; Henry 2007; Bridgestock 2013). According to evidence from United Nations (2019), the global market for creative goods has more than doubled between 2002 and 2015 to over $500 billion. The importance from this sector comes from “the fact that creativity, knowledge and access to information are increasingly recognised as powerful engines driving economic growth and promoting development in a globalizing world” (United Nations 2019). As an alternative funding source, artrepreneurship can help stimulate the cultural economy.

The potential importance of artrepreneurship both for individuals and the economy more generally highlights the need to understand the drivers of artists’ business venturing behaviours. This issue mirrors an equivalent, long-standing debate in the business discipline of entrepreneurship. The identification of the antecedents of entrepreneurship allows policymakers to target and/or develop individuals in order to raise entrepreneurship, and to create suitable institutions and policies to support their activities. This literature has identified an array of antecedent factors including institutional structures and prevailing economic environment and general culture that promote entrepreneurship within the economy (e.g. see Woronkowicz and Noonan 2019). On the other hand, individual-level variables are also important. These include opportunity from personal circumstances, training, upbringing and sheer luck. In addition, a range of psychological variables such as individual personality traits (Carland et al. 1984), motivations (Shaver and Scott 1992) and decision-making styles (Busenitz and Barney 1997) have also been explored (see Frese and Gielnik 2014, for an overview). While results have been mixed, more recent meta-analyses have been able to confirm some of the proposed relationship between individual psychological variables and entrepreneurial behaviour (e.g. Zhao and Seibert 2006; Pekkala Kerr et al. 2017).

This paper is intended to contribute to our understanding of the drivers of artrepreneurship, which is itself an important driver of the cultural economy yet has not enjoyed the same policy focus as other economically important sectors (Caust 2019). In the following, we examine the antecedents of artrepreneurship using a study with 93 practicing artists. Notwithstanding our relatively modest sample size, we believe ours is a first exploratory attempt to study this issue empirically. Our approach to this issue is the following. First, because of the overlap between artrepreneurial and entrepreneurial behaviour along with similarities between processes and environment, we apply relevant insights from entrepreneurship research to inform our research model and hypotheses, and, in turn, data collection.

Overall, we focus on three sets of individual antecedents. First, we pay attention to art-specific factors related to artistic practice, informed by research in cultural economics. In particular, we use established indicators of the artistic career (such as creative income and time allocated to creative practice) to examine its influence on artrepreneurship. The second is the individual passion to engage in entrepreneurial activities related to one’s artistic practice. The third comprises certain psychological individual difference characteristics underlying artrepreneurship including general personality and motivation.

The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. The next section outlines the research model based on prior literature and the hypotheses we derive. Section 3 contains details of the data collection and the result of their analysis. Section 4 concludes with a discussion of the findings, the limitations of our study and concluding remarks.

2 Theoretical model and hypotheses

The research question that motivates the current study relates to the individual-level drivers of artrepreneurial behaviour. Our study was designed to identify the individual professional and psychological characteristics that underlie an artist’s decision to become an artrepreneur, i.e. to leverage their artistic practice for commercial gain. We now outline our research model in terms of the variables and their hypothesised relationships that we derived based on relevant existing literature (see Fig. 1). The details of how we measure these are contained in Sect. 3.1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Research model

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2.1 Artistry

A first and necessary condition for artrepreneurship is to be an artist, i.e. someone engaging in creative practice that is suitable for commercialisation. The question who may be called an artist in this sense of the term is not clear cut. Artists’ labour market behaviour has been much-studied in cultural economics (for an overview see: Alper and Wassall 2006; Bille 2020). The idiosyncrasies of this market mean that no definitive criteria of what precisely constitutes professional artistry exists. Multiple job holdings are one aspect, as is the varying and subjective nature of the quality of artistic output. Frey and Pommerehne (1989) propose a host of qualifying criteria including time spent on creative practice, income derived from it, recognition among peers and the public, self-image, training, professional memberships and the quality of artistic works.

We term this group of factors artistry, the intensity and importance of artistic practice in an artist’s life. Artistry consists of commitment to creating art and the standing it has in an artist’s life. It is therefore an important driver of willingness to commercialise art as it positively affects the prospect of success and the enjoyment it brings compared to alternative career choices. We expect this variable to be related to artrepreneurship as it contains both the ability and willingness to create art that may be leveraged commercially.

Hypothesis 1

Artistry is positively associated with artrepreneurship status.

2.2 Artrepreneurial passion

We next consider an affective factor underlying an individual’s artrepreneurial decisions that we adapt from recent entrepreneurship literature. Several seemingly non-rational aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour, such as excessive optimism, risk taking and intense commitment as well as drive, have long been attributed to strong emotional forces. This led to the conceptualisation of entrepreneurial passion, argued to be one of the most central phenomena of entrepreneurial activity (Cardon et al. 2009).

Cardon et al. (2009) conceptualise entrepreneurial passion as those consciously accessible intense positive emotions resulting from entrepreneurial activity that provide the individual concerned with the motivation to deal with the attendant challenges of uncertainty, with meaning and with self-identity. In the empirical development of the concept, entrepreneurial passion has been identified as a key driver of decisions to engage in entrepreneurship generally (Cardon et al. 2013).

Due to the centrality of passion to entrepreneurship and the existence of more psychological similarities between artists and entrepreneurs (Arenius et al. 2020; Coate et al. 2021), we examine a role for an equivalent construct underpinning an artist’s decision to venture creatively: We conceptualise the notion of artrepreneurial passion as a driver of artrepreneurship. However, in contrast to entrepreneurs, artists contemplating leveraging their creativity for commercial gain are potentially faced with a dilemma. For many, turning art into business is akin to “selling out” and is associated with losing artistic integrity and control (Abbing 2008; Bridgstock 2013).

Another point of difference is that the entrepreneurial passion of artists involves a greater amount of identification with their venture (Darmer 2008). In artrepreneurship, the commercialised venture simultaneously creates an experience in consumers (of consuming art) and producers (of venturing) that overlap significantly. Similarly, Beckman (2007) and Bridgstock (2013) argue that the drivers of artrepreneurship differ from business in the greater importance of identity compared to financial motives.

We therefore adapt the entrepreneurial passion scale developed by Cardon et al. (2013) to the particular context of commercialising art. Using this scale, we focus on domains of artrepreneurship identified previous literature as sources of strong positive feelings. These include novelty, searching for new opportunities and overcoming challenges as well as the pursuit of success, reputation and income. In particular, we conceptualise two dimensions of artrepreneurial passion. The first, which we term commercial artrepreneurial passion (AP-COM) reflects the commercial motive behind artrepreneurial passion including an element of networking and collaboration for expressly extrinsic reasons. The second, which we call innovative artrepreneurial passion (AP-NEW), speaks to change and innovation—the excitement from the development and success of new opportunities beyond the artist’s comfort zone. We posit that entrepreneurial passion, in the context of artists commercialising their creative practice, consists of two separate dimensions: The artistic passion for innovation and change, and another one for commercial success.

Hypothesis 2

Artrepreneurial passion is positively associated with artrepreneurship status.

2.3 Individual difference factors

By individual difference factors, we mean person-specific psychological characteristics including personality, motivations and cognitive styles. Among the vast array of individual difference factors established in research, we select those that have been shown in the previous literature as predictive of behaviour either in the entrepreneurial or artistic realm, i.e. part of the artrepreneurial behaviour profile as artrepreneurs are both artists and entrepreneurs. For this reason, individual difference factors are contained in our model in that they are hypothesised to influence all the other constructs. We consider two types: personality and motivational factors.

First, personality consists of stable tendencies that shape an individual’s typical actions, thoughts and feelings. They commonly include five to six dimension including openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. An additional factor of honesty–humility is also argued to exist (Ashton and Lee 2009).

Certain personality aspects have been found to be predictive of being an artist. Studies using different personality inventories have been conducted with artists since the 1950s not least to test the stereotypical artistic personality. While the evidence is mixed it suggests that artists are less emotionally stable and extravert but also more open to change (Drevdahl and Cattell 1958; Cross et al. 1967; Götz and Götz 1979; Kemp 1996). On the other hand, the evidence overall is mixed and associations tend not to be strong potentially because of other external influences such as opportunity and environmental and institutional factors (Abuhamdeh and Csikszentmihalyi 2014; Feist 1998).

We also hypothesise personality to be an influence on artrepreneurship. We take our cue from plentiful literature in entrepreneurship that attests to the importance of underlying psychological characteristics that affect someone’s intention and decision towards, as well as success in business venture creation (e.g. Busenitz and Barney 1997). Among these, generalised personality has been the subject of many studies. Overall, studies have documented some significant personality drivers of entrepreneurship including conscientiousness, openness to experience, emotionality and extraversion (Zhao and Seibert 2006). We hypothesise that similar personality dimensions drive artists’ decisions to commercialise the fruits of their practice.

There is evidence that psychological and personality attributes are linked to entrepreneurial passion in business. For example, Obschonka et al. (2019) find that a person’s overall entrepreneurial profile, i.e. entrepreneurial tendencies across all fundamental personality dimensions, is positively associated with entrepreneurial passion. We therefore make a corresponding hypothesis for artrepreneurial passion.

Hypothesis 3

Artrepreneurial passion is positively associated with certain personality dimensions.

In addition to general personality, we also consider two specific psychological characteristics known to be associated with both artistry and business entrepreneurship, and therefore relevant to our study of artrepreneurship. The first is intrinsic motivation. An intrinsically motivated person performs an action for its own reward rather for some external (and especially material) reward. Such people seek self-actualisation and higher purposes, characteristics often attributed to artists who pursue their passions and creative drive (Abbing 2008).

The second is a complex of symptoms known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), including inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness. Historical research suggests historical figures in the arts world like Leonardo may have been afflicted (Catani and Mazzarello 2019). More generally, artists tend to be relatively impulsive (Feist 1998), distractible (Honos-Webb 2010) and sensitive, signs of ADHD also associated with creativity and intuition (Simonton 2014). Similarly, existing research suggests that those in self-employment or with entrepreneurial intentions manifest these symptoms more (Verheul et al. 2015; Lerner et al. 2018). ADHD symptoms may confer benefits for the entrepreneurial career (Wiklund et al. 2017). We refer to this dimension as impulsivity and ADHD interchangeably in the following.

Hypothesis 4

Artrepreneur status is positively associated with certain personality dimensions and impulsivity and intrinsic motivation.

Hypothesis 5

Artistry is positively associated with certain personality dimensions and impulsivity and intrinsic motivation.

Finally, our model considers various demographic influences that may affect the constructs or their relationships. Rather than developing hypotheses about such effects, we control for three demographics in our analyses, namely gender, age and educational attainment.

Our model of artrepreneurship, including both its constructs and their interrelationships, is in line with current models of entrepreneurship. For instance, Frese and Gielnik (2014, p. 429) provide a comprehensive framework including personality, motivational factors, cognitive antecedents and social preconditions as causes of entrepreneurial success. These four groups of factors, in that order, correspond closely to ours of individual difference factors, artrepreneurial passion, artistry and our demographic moderators, respectively. Because Frese and Gielniks (2014) framework is both general and conceptual it also includes both broader (national culture, economic environment) and more specific (entrepreneurial behaviours and activities) factors not present in our empirical model that relates to the specific data we collected. For instance, we do not include institutional variables because our sample of artists operates under the same economic and cultural conditions in Australia.

3 Methods and results

We conducted a study to measure these artistic, psychological and occupational variables in order to test their hypothesised relationships. In particular, we measured a raft of psychological constructs in a diverse group of 93 artists with different artistic profiles and experience that we elicit by questionnaire. We ask whether their decisions to engage in artrepreneurship are explained with reference to the different aspects of their artistic practice and measured psychological traits as well as artrepreneurial passion.

3.1 Measures

Our main dependent variable, artrepreneurship (ARTE), was measured based on participants’ self-assignment to occupation categories as either freelancing (46%), “self-employment akin to cultural entrepreneurship” (37% of participants), paid employment (12%) or “other” (5%). We generated a dummy variable to denote those artists who declared themselves to be self-employed cultural entrepreneurs on response to this question (ARTE = 0 or 1).

We also measure artistry, the depth of an artist’s profile. Artistry captures the importance of artistic practice to an artist’s life in terms of longevity of career to date, commitment, recognition and income derived from practice. Based on the factors identified by Frey and Pommerehne (1989), we focus on recognition, time and income as defining and readily measurable aspects of artistic practice but added career stage.

We therefore conceptualise artistry as a multi-dimensional measure of a person’s artistic profile in terms of the intensity of their commitment to practice, its importance to their financial income and the history of their practice. Artistic standing (STAND) is an ordinal variable ranging from future artist, hobbyist, professional to peer-recognised professional. We measure time spent on creative practice (TIME) as an ordinal variable ranging from 8 hours to 38 or more hours a week. Career stage (STAGE) is measured as an ordinal variable from emerging, to mid-career and established artist. Finally, INCOME measures the contribution artistic earnings make to an artist’s overall income.

In terms of the psychological constructs, we measured six major personality traits using the 60-item version of HEXACO (Ashton and Lee 2009) as honesty–humility (HEX-H), emotionality (HEX-E), extraversion (HEX-X), agreeableness (HEX-A), conscientiousness (HEX-C) and openness to experience (HEX-O). Intrinsic motivation is composed of different dimensions. Learning goal orientation is the motivation to achieve mastery by acquiring new skills and competences. We measure learning goal orientation (VandeWalle 1997) to measure intrinsic motivation (INTMOT). We administered six screening questions of the Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) Scale (ASRS-v1.1, Kessler et al. 2005) which is used to screen adults for symptoms including inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness Table 1.

Table 1 Study variables
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3.2 Data Collection

Of the 93 artists who participated in our study, 53 identified as female and 38 as male. Their average age was 35.2 years. For 94%, English was the mother tongue. We recruited using ads in online and physical fora frequented by artists as well as through invitation emails sent by participating artists organisations that we approached. Individuals qualified if some part of their income came from artistic practice. Different fields of practice were represented including film, music, dance, literature and visual art, the latter accounting for more than half of participants. In some of our analyses below, the number of observations falls below this number due to incomplete responses.

The study was conducted in a university laboratory in central Melbourne, Australia. Multiple sessions were conducted with between 5 and 20 participants seated at partitioned computer terminals. The artist sessions were part of a larger study with different occupational groups performing tasks not reported here but in our companion paper (Arenius et al. 2020). Sessions lasted 90 minutes on average. Participants received financial compensation in cash and by bank transfer averaging 42 AUD for all tasks. Participants completed questionnaires on their computer screens. Biographical questions about artistic practice and experience were followed by demographic questions and psychological measures.

We now examine to what extent artrepreneurship is determined by a person’s artistry, underlying psychological individual difference variables and artrepreneurial passion, controlling for relevant demographic factors.

3.3 Artistry

We begin by examining artistry, the artistic profile that artrepreneurs seek to commercialise. There are (as expected) significant inter-correlations between the four aspects of the artistic profile that we measure (Table 2). We use the nonparametric Spearman approach as the variables concerned are ordinal in nature. While TIME is positively related to all the other dimensions, STAND relates to none of the other dimensions. Our inclusion of career stage is supported by the association of this variable with the other measures we derived from the literature. From this, we derive an overall measure of artistic profile (ARTISTRY) as the average of the four dimensions of artistry (INCOME, STAND, STAGE, TIME), which is normally distributed (Shapiro–Wilk p = 0.119).

What determines individual artistry? We previously discussed the psychological determinants of the artistic personality examined in previous psychometric studies that compared artists with non-artists. In contrast to those studies, our focus on artist participants allows us to examine the degree of artistry between them. Models 1 to 3 in Table 3 contain ordinary least squares regressions with robust errors where ARTISTRY is the dependent variable. Models 1 and 2, respectively, enter the HEXACO fundamental dimensions and the other two traits separately. The reason is that both intrinsic motivation and impulsivity are known to be highly correlated with multiple personality dimensions, potentially measuring the same parts of some of the underlying psychological constructs. When entered alone, none of the personality dimensions significantly explain differences in artistry between our artist participants. Model 2 shows that ADHD symptoms and intrinsic motivation (marginally) explain artistry. In order to examine the combined effects of all individual difference factors considered in this study, we employ a general-to-specific approach (Campos et al. 2005) in model 3 where insignificant explanators are iteratively eliminated. The final model shows extraversion and openness to experience now are significant along with ADHD symptoms and intrinsic motivation. All coefficients’ variance inflation factors are below 1.3, suggesting no multicollinearity problems exist. These results control for demographic variables (gender, age and education level).

Table 2 Spearman rank correlations between the four dimensions of artistry. p values in brackets
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Table 3 Regression results for artistry (ARTISTRY, Ordinary Least Squares) as well as commercial and innovative artrepreneurial passion (AP-COM and AP-NEW, Ordinary Least Squares). Standardised beta coefficients with standard errors in parentheses
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Result 1

Artistry is significantly and positively associated with impulsivity and intrinsic motivation as well as with openness to experience and extraversion, partly confirming H5.

The fact that individual difference factors explain the intensity of an artistic profile goes beyond existing findings of characteristics that distinguish artists from non-artists (see Sect. 2.3). The particular influences we identify (intrinsic motivation, impulsivity and extraversion) and the direction of the effects are also in line with those findings. However, the negative significant coefficient for openness to experience is unexpected as this personality dimension has been shown to be more typical for artists than other professions in other studies.

3.4 Artrepreneurial Passion

We now examine the hypothesised role of the two dimensions of artrepreneurial passion in our model. The 13 items we adapted from the entrepreneurial passion instrument of Cardon et al. (2013) are shown in Fig. 2. The first, commercial artrepreneurial passion (AP-COM, Cronbach \(\alpha =0.75\)), comprises items 1 and 8 to 10. The second, innovative artrepreneurial passion, consists of items 2 to 7 and 11 to 13 (AP-NEW, \(\alpha =0.65\)). The two are moderately correlated (Pearson r = 0.233, p = 0.044).

Fig. 2
figure 2

Artrepreneurial Passion Instrument

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We next examine whether these two different factors underlying artrepreneurial passion are linked to psychological characteristics as hypothesised. Models 4 and 5 in Table 3 show the results for AP-COM. None of the individual difference factors generate significant coefficients. In marked contrast, artrepreneurial innovative passion (AP-NEW) is related to a number of individual difference factors (model 7). Intrinsic motivation is a significant negative influence, as are extraversion and humility.

Result 2

Innovative, but not commercial artrepreneurial passion is significantly associated with some individual difference factors, partly confirming H3.

These results speak to the psychological correlates of emotions that artists may experience when commercialising their practice. It is noteworthy that the relationships are negative in that commercially passionate artrepreneurs are relatively low in humility. This dimension is associated with greed, lack of modesty, sincerity and fairness (Ashton and Lee 2009). Similarly, the negative relationship to intrinsic motivation is rooted in the extrinsic nature of commercial passion. The negative relationship of passion to extraversion, gratification from social interactions, is not clear.

We did not hypothesise a relationship between artistry and artrepreneurial passion but our data provide an opportunity to explore this link. AP-COM is significantly negatively associated with artistry overall (model 5), perhaps supporting the idea of a conflict between artistic integrity and commercial motives. It is also supported by the significant relationship between artistry and intrinsic motivation we find in this study. When we break artistry down, advanced career stage is a positive and income a negative influence (model 6). The latter finding suggests that entrepreneurs rely on other forms of earnings to complement their artistic venture. Overall artistry is not related to AP-NEW (model 8) but when we break this construct down (model 9), a different aspect, time spent of practice, is negatively associated with innovative passion. While the reason for this result is not definitive, it may again reflect a disconnect between the intrinsic motivation behind art and artrepreneurial passion generally.

Result 3

Commercial, but not innovative artrepreneurial passion is significantly and negatively associated with artistry.

3.5 Artrepreneurship

We finally turn to our key interest, the factors that drive artrepreneurship, which we measure in terms of self-reported employment status. Hypotheses 1, 2 and 4 propose artistry, passion and individual difference factors as such drivers.

We first use univariate tests for difference between the three artistic occupational groups, i.e. artrepreneurs, freelancers and employees. We do not include the fourth group (“other”) due to its small number and ambiguous interpretation. Kruskal–Wallis tests show that the three groups differ significantly only in emotionality (p=0.009), marginally in conscientiousness (p=0.055) and impulsivity (p=0.053). In particular, among the three groups, artrepreneurs have the highest scores for conscientiousness and the lowest for emotionality as well as impulsivity. There were no significant group differences for any of the other psychological characteristics, artistry or the two artrepreneurial passion factors.

These results reflect other studies that find conscientiousness and low emotionality to be more associated with entrepreneurs than other occupational groups (e.g. Zhao and Seibert 2006). For impulsiveness, the literature provides no clear guide because, as discussed, this construct is related to both being an artist and being an entrepreneur.

Table 4 shows the regression results which confirm artistry overall is not a significant explanator of artrepreneurship. Drilling down to the constituent parts of artistry we see that artistic standing alone is associated with artrepreneurship, but the relationship is negative. There is therefore no evidence that artistry positively affects artrepreneurship suggesting other, non-artistic factors may be driving entrepreneurial spirit among artists.

Table 4 Regression results for artrepreneur status (ARTE, Probit). Standardised beta coefficients with standard errors in parentheses
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Result 4

There is no evidence supporting H1: Artistry is not a significant driver of artrepreneurship.

We next examine the role individual difference factors play in artrepreneurship. Controlling for personal demographics, half of the HEXACO-dimensions are significantly related to artrepreneurship. Compared to the other artists, artrepreneurs tend to be less emotional, less impulsive and less agreeable but more conscientious. These results are in line with our univariate findings above. The former two results also support previous findings that business entrepreneurs are significantly less emotional and impulsive than artists (self-citation, 2020).

Result 5

Artrepreneurship is significantly associated with certain individual difference factors including low emotionality and impulsivity and agreeableness and conscientiousness, supporting H4.

We finally examine to what extent artrepreneurial passion drives artrepreneurship. The results are contained in model 5 of Table 4. It shows that neither dimension has a significant effect on artrepreneurship.Footnote 1 This finding is unexpected because of the evidence that passion significantly explains entrepreneurial behaviour in a business context. The validity and/or reliability of our new construct is a potential explanation. On the other hand, we saw that it relates significantly (and in the expected directions) to other measures.

Result 6

There is no evidence supporting H2: Artrepreneurial passion is not a significant driver of artrepreneurship.

4 Discussion and conclusions

This study attempted to identify the individual-level factors resulting in an artist’s decision to commercialise their art as an artrepreneur. Our study is, to our knowledge, the first to measure artrepreneurship in individuals and therefore also the first to examine the individual-level antecedents of it.

Based on existing relevant literature, we hypothesised the effect of three groups of factors. The first two involved several psychological individual differences and artistic profile antecedents. The third was a new a measure of artrepreneurial passion that we hypothesised to be a factor based on relevant theory in entrepreneurship. Our overall finding is that the psychological constructs have the greatest explanatory power, with both artistry and artrepreneurial passion not exerting a significant influence on artrepreneurship. We now discuss these results.

The overall impression from our results is tentative support for a disconnect between the intrinsic motivations of artists, as in art for art’s sake, and the commercial aspects of business venturing using one’s creative practice. Several facts speak to this. Artistry was not related to artrepreneurship even though, in a sense, it provides the business case for the venture. Artistic standing is negatively associated with artrepreneurship. Intrinsic motivation was negatively related to one dimension artrepreneurship. Overall the profile of the artrepreneur compared to other artists (high conscientiousness, low emotionality and impulsivity) reflects the difference between artists and the general population. This raises the question whether artrepreneurs are less typically artistic in nature. It may be that the same underlying source of artistry at the same time motivates resistance to sell it: What makes a person artistic may be also make them perceive and resist the idea of “selling out”. We feel that this possibility warrants a closer look in future research because if true, it would constitute a major impediment to artrepreneurship.

We made a first, exploratory step to the development of an artrepreneurial passion instrument, based on an equivalent construct in entrepreneurship. The two dimensions we identified stand for distinct sources of artrepreneurial passion, a commercial and an innovative passion. Both have modest but acceptable internal consistency. Neither was a significant explanator of artrepreneurship. Future work may improve the adaptation of the entrepreneurial passion instrument to artrepreneurship with a larger sample size.

We should note that in terms of our main dependent variable the bar is set high. We measure actual artrepreneurship rather than aspirational or intended commercialisation of an artist’s creative practice. Our dichotomous measure is therefore rather blunt. Also, some business-minded artists may have chosen to commercialise albeit within the more predictable environment of a salaried artistic occupation. A more fine-grained measure may be a desirable development of our work. We should also note the modest sample size occasioned by logistical challenges. Future work with a greater number of artists of different types and experiences would no doubt improve the reliability and validity of results.

The policy implications from our work come from a better understanding of the individual difference characteristics that influence what type of artist a person typically becomes. Such insight is important for cultural policy and artistic professional development. Self-awareness has been identified as an important skill in managing the artistic career in an increasingly adverse funding environment. Policy and artrepreneurial education programmes may be targeted towards the drivers of artrepreneurship not associated with the typical artist (e.g. Roberts 2012; Brown 2005).

Our findings speak to the explanatory power of personality and motivation-based individual difference factors that have fallen out of fashion within entrepreneurship. A number of authors have cast doubt on the personality approach to entrepreneurship that may also limit what such approaches can reveal about artrepreneurship (e.g. Duening 2010). Our results echo the sentiment of Zhao and Seibert (2006, p. 259) “that this conclusion is premature and may truncate theory development in the field of entrepreneurship by unnecessarily precluding personality variables”.

A number of limitations of the current study should be noted. The first is the relatively modest sample occasioned from the logistical challenges associated with recruiting artists for a laboratory-based study. We believe our findings have to be interpreted in this light. Our exploratory results nonetheless provide hypotheses for future work to examine using larger samples. In addition, there are limits on the number of questionnaire items that can be elicited before fatigue or demotivation to participate set in, further challenging recruitment. Future studies with larger and different samples should be conducted to replicate our results to further support our conclusions. Larger sample sallow for more sophisticated statistical tools to assess the possibility of autocatalytic relationship between artrepreneurship and artrepreneurial passion, equivalent to such relationships detected in entrepreneurship research. Here, entrepreneurial passion has been found to be simultaneously a cause and an effect of entrepreneurial behaviour (Gielnik et al. 2015).

We close by observing that individual difference factors are one of a complex set of internal and external factors that should be evaluated in the context of other findings. Similarly, while the human psychology may give a fatalistic impression of constant suitability to commercialise art and venture out, this is far from the case. Self-reflection, development of behavioural competencies and personalities that adapt to experience provide plenty of room for improving artrepreneurship that is partly determined by individual difference factors.