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Scholars have long overlooked entrepreneurship in the performing arts. The difficulty of making firms operating in these contexts economically self-sufficient and the consequent dependence on public funding have long diverted the attention of scholars from this topic. Only recently, especially thanks to the advancements in theory on entrepreneurship, the phenomenon has begun to be examined in these contexts. This paper, which is mainly based on literature on entrepreneurship and on nascent literature focused on arts entrepreneurship, aims at exploring the entrepreneurial phenomenon with reference to a specific art: the theatre. It is focused on a firm operating in Italy, whose institutional system is characterized to be of particular, although decreasing, support for firms operating in cultural industries. The case study identifies the dimensions of entrepreneurship, declined considering the specificity of the activity and the context in which the firm operates.

This study provides insights into young consumers’ responses to sustainable labels. Drawing on signaling theory, the article studies how third-party labels (TPLs) act and interact with company-level claims, trying to better understand their impact on young consumers’ perceptions and willingness to buy (pay for) a chocolate bar. A between-subjects factorial experiment—conducted by manipulating third-party sustainable labels (presence/absence of the labels) and self-declared claims (absence of the claim, formal claim, and friendly claim)—was used to test: (a) the effect of TPLs and self-declared claims on consumers’ perceptions, purchase intention, and willingness to pay, (b) whether this effect was mediated through the perceived credibility of the sustainability message, and (c) what kind of tone-of-voice adopted in the company’s claim was more effective. Data were collected via an online survey among a sample of 315 consumers (age range: 18–39 years) in South Italy. We found that third-party labels, “alone” were not effective in influencing consumers’ perceptions and willingness to buy/pay, while a self-declared claim, especially if characterized by a formal tone of voice, had a much more relevant impact. The combination of TPLs and self-declaration affected most consumers’ willingness to pay when the copy claim was informal. The perceived credibility of the sustainability message mediated the relationships between self-declared claims and the majority of the dependent variables, while, with reference to the relationship between TPLs and dependent variables, it did not act as a mediator.

Arts entrepreneurship is not a new area of investigation, but it is far from constituting a consolidated topic. Scholars coming from several fields rediscovered it only in recent years, after a period in which it has been slow to emerge. Since the early 2000s, they developed a heterogeneous literature, which is difficult to disentangle. The purpose of this study is to shed light on arts entrepreneurship literature, outlining the most significant issues emerged and their trajectories for future development. We attempted to achieve the purpose of this chapter through a qualitative analysis of the relevant literature on the topic. Results revealed the most relevant issues to which scholars are devoting their efforts. With respect to these, we tried to identify subthemes and we attempted to trace the trajectories for future research. The first main theme concerns the entrepreneur in the arts, focusing on aspects such as identity and characteristics, and examining training and entrepreneurial education. Another theme regards entrepreneurship and training, which is attracting increasing attention, thanks also to the emergence of specific curricula and arts incubators. Besides these themes, other collateral issues emerged. Ultimately, literature is complex and multifaceted, but it is possible to read it with greater clarity.