Institutional Pressures Of Place Branding On Firms Involvemen:Moderating Effect Of Industrial Competitive Intensity

As an important strategy of establishing regional competitive advantages,place branding has significant scale effects and overall advantages,thereby being widely used in strategic practices of regional development.Firms,which serve as important participators of place branding,are easily driven by economic rational motivations to pursue profits and escape participating in place branding.They may even take opportunistic behaviors to undermine place branding performance.It has become a universal concern of scholars and place brand managers to drive firms to participate in place branding.The existing researches focus on the roles of government as well as residents in place branding,and the interaction effect between firm brand and place brand,but pay little attention to the methods of driving firms to participate in place branding.Therefore,this research combines institutional theories with empirical researches to explore the important role of institutional pressure in driving firms to participate in place branding.In the meantime,it starts from practical problems with place branding to study the moderate effect of industrial competitive intensity in this process.The research results show that normative pressure and cultural-cognitive pressure of the institutional environment have a direct and significant driving effect on the firms involvement in place branding while regulatory pressures effect is not significant.In addition,the impact of institutional pressure on firms involvement varies with the condition of industrial competitive intensity: there is a U-shape relationship between institutional pressure and firms involvement when the industrial competitive intensity is low;there is a linear relationship between institutional pressure and firms involvement when the industrial competitive intensity is average;there is an inverted U-shape relationship between institutional pressure and firms involvement when the industrial competitive intensity is high.These findings suggest that industrial competitive intensity is an important impact factor on firms involvement in place branding under institutional pressure.This research introduces the conceptual model for firms involvement in place branding under institutional pressure to scientifically explain how to drive firms to participate in place branding.Besides,it deepens the understanding of the motivation mechanisms of firms involvement in place branding,thereby providing moresystematic management insights for managers to overcome management challenges(how to drive firms to participate in place branding)in place branding practice.