Detty December and the Festival Economy: Cultural Capital, Informality, and Seasonal Entrepreneurship in Nigeria

Detty December, Nigeria’s seasonal festival economy, represents a concentrated burst of entrepreneurial activity shaped by culture, consumption, and institutional context. This study investigates the interplay of cultural embeddedness, social and symbolic consumption, diaspora participation, informal market flexibility, and institutional conditions in driving entrepreneurial engagement during the festival. Using a structured survey of Lagos-based entrepreneurs and structural equation modeling, the results reveal that cultural norms provide a foundational demand framework, which is translated into market activity through symbolic and relational consumption. Diaspora-driven spending amplifies these effects, enhancing market intensity and opportunities for innovation. Informal market structures enable rapid responsiveness to temporal and spatial fluctuations, while institutional gaps both facilitate entry and shape the distribution of benefits, highlighting equity challenges. Mediation analyses show that consumption and informal mechanisms partially transmit cultural influences into entrepreneurial outcomes, and moderation results indicate that diaspora engagement strengthens these relationships. Collectively, these findings position Detty December as a temporally bounded, culturally embedded, and economically dynamic ecosystem, where local and transnational actors interact to generate tangible and intangible value. The study contributes to entrepreneurship theory by extending embeddedness concepts to seasonal economies and offers practical insights for policy and market development in emerging urban contexts.