This study empirically investigates the impact of cultural capital on creative flow and content effectiveness among media content creators within the digital content ecosystem, while examining the moderating effect of digital literacy. Drawing upon Bo...
This study empirically investigates the impact of cultural capital on creative flow and content effectiveness among media content creators within the digital content ecosystem, while examining the moderating effect of digital literacy. Drawing upon Bourdieu's (1986) cultural capital theory and Csikszentmihalyi's (1990, 2000) flow theory as theoretical foundations, cultural capital was reconceptualized into a three-dimensional structure comprising embodied, objectified, and institutionalized cultural capital.
Methodologically, a structured survey was conducted with 708 content creators nationwide, employing a temporal separation design with a four-week interval to minimize common method bias. Data analysis was performed through structural equation modeling (SEM) and multi-group analysis.
The principal findings are as follows: First, all three dimensions of cultural capital demonstrated significant positive effects on creative flow, with embodied cultural capital emerging as the most robust predictor. Second, creative flow exerted significant influence on both economic effectiveness and social effectiveness, with higher explanatory power for social effectiveness than economic effectiveness. Third, mediation analysis using the Bootstrap method confirmed that creative flow completely mediates the relationship between cultural capital and content effectiveness. Fourth, digital literacy demonstrated significant moderating effects exclusively in the relationship between objectified cultural capital and creative flow.
The theoretical contributions of this research include the extension of Bourdieu's cultural capital theory to digital environments and the empirical verification of the complete mediating role of creative flow. Practically, the study provides MCN enterprises and platform operators with insights regarding the critical importance of developing creators' cultural competencies and fostering psychological flow environments. Future research should pursue theoretical refinement through longitudinal analysis and cross-cultural comparative studies.