Reluctantly independent: motivations for self-employed artistic work

Self-employment is much more frequent among artists and creative workers than other occupations. This has led to the emergence of the notion of the ‘artist-entrepreneur,’ which associates these workers with autonomy and independence and the ability to choose their own career paths. This study explores motivations for self-employed artistic work by using data from five waves of the Contingent Worker Supplement to the Current Population Survey collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Using Coarsened Exact Matching, we compare artists to non-artists in predicting motivations for self-employed work. We find that artists are different than non-artists in terms of their entrepreneurial motivations. Artists are less likely to seek self-employment for economic reasons as compared to other motivators. They are more likely to do so for reasons related to independence, time flexibility, and personal reasons. However, the preference for independence and time flexibility is not associated with self-employed artistic work more than it is associated with other types of self-employed work. The main difference between self-employed artists and non-artists is in the likelihood of choosing self-employment for lack of choice and for economic reasons. The findings make us question the notion of the ‘artist-entrepreneur’ by showing that both self-employed artists and non-artists have similar motivations related to seeking professional self-determination, but that self-employed artists are more likely to be motivated by their precariousness.