External Incentive Mechanism Research on Knowledge Cooperation-Sharing in the Chinese Creative Industry Cluster

The creative industry is a knowledge-based industry, but it is difficult and complex to create knowledge for enterprises. The principle of cooperation-sharing posits that companies’ limited resources prohibit them from gaining a competitive advantage in all business areas. Therefore, cooperation-sharing can help businesses overcome this hurdle. Cooperation-sharing expedites economic development, breaks the barrier of independent knowledge creation, and enhances resource utilization. However, the effectiveness and stability of knowledge cooperation-sharing are key problems facing governments and other regulators. This study can help regulators promote honesty in enterprise cooperation-sharing. Based on the hypothesis of bounded rationality, the evolutionary game theory was used to construct the “Enterprises–Informal Institutions–Government” tripartite game matrix. Next, based on this game matrix, a simulation analysis method was used to analyze the effects of external incentives on the stability of evolutionary strategies. The analysis shows that the strategic choice of the “Enterprises–Informal Institutions–Government” tripartite game could be affected by the initial state strategy choices of the other two players, but more influential were the cost and external incentive levels of the game players. The results indicate that the government and informal institutions should regulate enterprises with a rational external incentive mechanism that boosts the enterprises’ incentive to cooperate honestly. Thus, an effective external incentive mechanism can significantly improve the probability of enterprises behaving honestly in cooperation-sharing and promote the development of the creative industry.