A Study on the Employment-Generating Effects of the Short-Video Industry in the Context of the Creator Economy

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-825-2_25How to use a DOI?

Keywords

digital economy; short-video employment; creator economy; regional analysis; flexible employment

Abstract

Against the backdrop of a fragile global economic recovery, persistent structural employment imbalances, and mounting youth employment pressure, the digital economy has created new channels for flexible and platform-based work. This paper examines the effect of digital economy development on short-video employment and whether this effect differs across eastern, central, and western China. Using panel data for 31 Chinese provinces from 2019 to 2023, short-video employment is treated as the dependent variable, while a provincial digital economy index constructed using the entropy-weight method is the core explanatory variable. After controlling for urbanisation, industrial structure, population size, and human capital, the study applies pooled OLS, regional interaction models, Wald tests of regional marginal effects, and Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis. The results show that digital economy development significantly increases short-video employment. Its marginal effects are positive and significant in all three regions, while the interaction terms indicate no significant regional differences. The Monte Carlo results further confirm that the findings are robust to uncertainty in the backcasted provincial creator counts. This study provides provincial-level evidence on the employment effects of the digital economy and offers implications for expanding digital employment, improving labour protection, and strengthening workforce skills.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Minghuan Cai
AU  - Ying Huang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/10
TI  - A Study on the Employment-Generating Effects of the Short-Video Industry in the Context of the Creator Economy
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Public Service, Economic Management and Sustainable Development (PESD 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 249
EP  - 256
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-825-2_25
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-825-2_25
ID  - Cai2026
ER  -