Abstract：Inter-regional M&A is an important way to mitigate cultural firms’ resource constraints and realize their great-leap-forward development. Affected by the heterogeneity of the regional industrial environment， the location selections of cultural firms in M&As are quite different. Based on resource-based theory， this paper constructs an index system of regional environmental assessment from the four dimensions of policy support， cultural resources， creative elements and industrial development and uses the data of 543 M&A events from 2008 to 2016 to exploit the impact of regional industrial environment on cultural firms’ M&A location choices and performance. The results suggest that the industrial eco-environment has significantly affected the cultural firms’ M&A activities. Considering the M&A performance， the improvement of the industrial eco-environment can bring growth effects to cultural firms. The better the environment where the target is located， the better the M&A performance of the acquirer， but the growth effect only exists in the M&A which the state-owned cultural firm as the acquirer. Further examine the mechanism of firms’ performance， and finds that the incremental support of the external environment can effectively reduce the operating costs of state-owned cultural firms. The findings have important reference for cultural firms’ regional selections and government to optimize the investment environment.
2018, Vol. 57 
