본 연구에서는 디지털창의성의 개념을 정의하고 이들에게 영향을 미치는 영향요인으로 디지털리스트성향, 디지털환경, 전문성영역 등을 제시하고 이들 간의 인과관계를 표현하는 연구모형을 제시하였다. 또한, 디지털리스트, 디지털환경, 전문성 영역을 구성하는 하위개념을 소개하였다. 또한, 본 연구모형을 검증하기 위하여 실제 포탈사이트에 운영되고 있는 아바타 쇼핑몰에서 창의성 측정 실험을 실시하였다. 본 실험에서는 특정한 상황과 돈을 지급하고 각 개인이 창의성을 발휘하여 아바타를 꾸미도록 하였으며, 그 결과를 미술선생 및 웹디자이너에게 창의성 평가를 받도록 하였다. 또한, 기존의 창의성 성향을 측정하는 설문을 수정하여 실제 디지털창의성을 측정하도록 하였다. 분석결과 디지털리스트성향, 디지털환경, 전문영역 등이 디지털창의성에 영향을 미치는 것으로 분석되었다.
The main objective of this study is to propose digital creativity concept and investigate antecedent factors influencing the digital creativity. Unit of analysis here is an individual working in a digitalized environment. This study was motivated by the findings derived from literature survey that there is no study, in the fields of creativity, focused on investigating how individuals show creativity in a digitalized working environment. In this sense, a new concept "digitalist" is introduced, representing those individuals who work in a digitalized environment and possess a certain level of skills dealing with computers in their own works. In addition, we propose three antecedent factors such as digitalist propensity, digital environment, expertise fields that are supposed to affect the digitalists` creativity. According to several researchers, creativity is defined as a judgment of the novelty and usefulness (or value) of something. Especially, individual creativity was emphasized in the field of psychological research (Amabile, 1982). On the other hand, in the sociological approach, team creativity was a main focus of creativity researchers. Though these two levels of creativity need to be integrated, this study rather stresses the precedents affecting individual creativity because previous studies lack supplying sufficient evidence on this research issue. In particular, in the context of innovative works, individual creativity tends to become more conspicuous. In this sense, this study focuses on investigating individual creativity based on the innovative tasks such as avatar design. Therefore, we proposed a research model where four constructs are involved-digitalist propensity, digital environment, expert area, digital creativity. According to the research model, five research hypotheses are as follows. Hypothesis 1 is "there exists a positive relationship between digitalist propensity and expert area". Hypothesis 2 is "there exists a positive relationship between digitalist propensity and digital creativity". Hypothesis 3 is "there exists a positive relationship between digital environment and expert area". Hypothesis 4 is "there exists digital environment and digital creativity". Hypothesis 5 is "there exists a positive relationship between expert area and digital creativity". Items for al the constructs but digital creativity were adapted from previous literature. Digital creativity was evaluated by three experts about design of avatars, websites, and drawings. Among 320 volunteers, 180 respondents were selected based on their active willingness to participate in this experiments. Initially they were given 3000 Korean won to initiate there avatar designs on the commercial websites. They were asked to submit their avatars to professional evaluators all of whom were administered by authors. To measure the proposed constructs like this, relevant questionnaire items were suggested on the basis of literature, and tested against the research model. With 180 valid questionnaires from the avatar shopping mall, we tested the statistical validity of the proposed research model using PLS. Results showed that the proposed constructs as well as research model are robust and valid with a statistical significance. Experiment results reveal that all the five hypotheses are statistically significant. Implications are as follows. First, there were no studies which attempted to investigate digital creativity on an empirical basis. Especially, most of previous studies about creativity were centered on plain creativity in the context of either working (individual/team/organization) or education. Contrary to this, this study proposes a new concept of digital creativity. Second, we suggested four preceding constructs which are deemed to explain digital creativity. Third, modern working environment requires a new type of individuals like digitalist who are supposed to reveal their intrinsic digital creativity. Therefore, we believe that this study will shed very promising milestone from which further studies about digital creativity will continue in the future.