Research On The Mechanism And Performance Of Knowledge Spillover From Colleges And Universities To Rural Areas

Problems about Agriculture, Rural areas and Peasantry restrict the sustainable development of economy and the harmony and stability of society, which have been paid close attention and become a hot focus by the whole society. Rural construction and development can’t be separated from the deepening reform of rural talent, science and technology, social services, etc., where the talent is the carrier of knowledge, and science and technology are the comprehensive and creative of current knowledge, and social service is related to the flow and absorption of knowledge. Therefore, knowledge is the core element to promote rural construction and development. For university, as a knowledge producer and innovator, serving to the rural construction and development is not only a glorious historical mission, but also a new requirement proposed by the construction of new socialist countryside. However, due to the restriction of knowledge characteristics, absorption capability, acceptance willingness and institutional environment, the knowledge spillover from universities to rural areas have many problems, such as matching problems of knowledge supply and knowledge demand, the overflow process and the way are not smooth caused by spillover barriers. Solving these problems would promote the construction and development of rural areas effectively.In regard to the above, considering the uniqueness and complexity characteristics of knowledge spillover from universities to rural areas, this paper comprehensively utilize multiple methods such as literature analysis, structured interviews, structural equation model and computational experimental method based on multi-agent modeling to explore the spillover mechanism from both the static and dynamic perspectives, so as to reveal the influencing factors, action mechanism and dynamic evolutionary rules about the spillover performance, to propose policy recommendations to promote knowledge spillover from university to rural areas. The specific research works are as follows.(1) Based on knowledge spillover theory, human capital theory and triple helix theory, a triple helix model of knowledge spillover from university to rural area is constructed. This dissertation details the uniqueness and complexity of knowledge spillover from university to rural area from the perspective of subjects by deploying specific chart data. Then, it deeply analyzes the formation process of knowledge spillover from university to rural area under such background, and elaborates conduction mechanism combining with the functions of universities.(2) By in-depth interview to manager or technician of rural organizations(such as farmers’ professional cooperatives, family farms, specialized households, township enterprises, local government, etc) from sample areas, more than 150 interview recording materials are prepared for further analysis and coding. Then five classes including knowledge source, knowledge receiver, spillover trajectory, associated scenarios and spillover performance are generated according to the focus coding. Meanwhile, the subclasses for each class are also obtained according to the axial coding. On the basis of the classes and their subclasses, the conceptual model of knowledge spillover from universities to rural areas is constructed. According to the influencing factors of spillover performance in the conceptual model, relevant hypothesizes are put forward combining with literature analysis.(3) Based on literature analysis, combining with the knowledge spillover path from universities to rural areas, measurement items for variables of the conceptual model are designed, which include the variables of knowledge source, knowledge receiver, associated scenarios, spillover performance, and so on. Such initial questionnaire is perfected by the pre investigation and its reliability and validity analysis. The effects of related factors on spillover performance are verified by formal survey data.(4) From the microscopic interaction perspective of universities and rural economic organizations, the dynamic procedure of knowledge spillover from universities to rural areas is simulated employing computational experimental method. Evolutionary behavior rules of rural economic organizations are analyzed under different scenarios.(5) Based on the theoretical analysis, empirical research and experimental results, specific strategies are proposed to improve the knowledge spillover performance from the aspects of knowledge source, knowledge receiver, and spillover environment.Through above work, the main conclusions are as follows.(1) The knowledge spillover from universities to rural areas originates from universities’ function and the externalities characteristics of knowledge. As the creator of new technology and new knowledge, universities have rich stock of knowledge. Therefore, universities are in dominant positions in the process of knowledge spillover to rural areas. However, knowledge spillover performance is influenced not only by knowledge source factors(such as knowledge attributes, universities’ innovation ability, spillover willingness and institutional environment), but also by the absorption capabilities of rural economic organizations and rural administrative organizations as well as the related scenarios and other factors.(2) There are five key factors during the knowledge spillover from universities to rural areas. First, the innovation ability and willingness to spill of source knowledge and the characteristics of the knowledge itself, which influence the effect of knowledge spillover. Second, the willingness to accept, the absorption capability, the experience of cooperation and the cooperation expectation of receiver are the key variables. Third, collaborative model of production, learning and research, personnel training, management consulting and technical training are the main ways to realize knowledge spillover from universities to rural areas. The fourth, associated scenarios include such elements as trust, distance, contracts detail and policy environment. The fifth, knowledge spillover performance includes tangible performance and potential performance.(3) Among the factors affecting the performance of knowledge spillover from universities to rural areas, "innovation ability" and "spillover willingness" of knowledge source have significant positive influences on both "tangible performance" and "potential performance”. The " task oriented trust " and " policy environment” of associated scenarios have positive influences on both "tangible performance" and "potential performance”, while the " knowledge distance " and " cultural distance " have negative influences on both performances. Meanwhile, The " absorption capability ", " cooperation expectation ", " cooperation experience” and "acceptance willingness" of receivers have positive influences on improving spillover performances.(4) The knowledge absorption capability and risk preference of rural economic organization play important roles in the long-term evolutionary process of knowledge spillover. Therefore, rural economic organizations should improve their knowledge absorption capabilities by a variety of ways such as organized learning, talent introduction, and so on. Meanwhile, it should be paid enough attention to the changes in risk preference of rural economic organizations. Under policy support scenarios, besides a variety of channels to provide loan or finance assistance which will be helpful to the effective implementation of university-rural cooperation projects, in order to attract more rural economic organization to participate in such subjects and make full use of the wisdom of the collectives to improve the efficiency of knowledge spillover, the security of stable incomes of the cooperation projects is very important.