Study On The Impact Of Business Environment On Urban Technological Innovation

As the development stage of China’s economy enters high-quality development,the role of technological development in promoting the social productivity has become more prominent.As a major decision,the national innovation-driven development strategy has been gradually deployed and promoted in recent years.As the carrier of innovation resources and environment,cities have continuously improved their independent innovation capabilities.However,it is still faced with practical difficulties such as low investment in innovation,low innovation quality,and urgent need to tackle key core technologies.Optimizing the business environment is an effective way for cities to pursue technology innovation.Only when the business environment reaches a certain level can it be possible for a country to gain technological innovation advantages,which is one of the keys to reducing innovation dependence.At present,China has greatly improved the level of the business environment in terms of starting a business,obtaining electricity,and protecting minority investors,providing a certain environmental foundation for urban technology innovation.However,it still needs to be developed in terms of certificate reduction,digital government and regional balance.At the same time,the business environment is a comprehensive system of the external environment for enterprises to engage in innovation activities.With the development of the regional innovation system theory to the regional innovation ecosystem,the business environment is regarded as a special kind of innovation ecosystem.In the new round of technological and industrial transformation,a more systematic development of the business environment is conducive to the completion of the business environment optimization and improvement stage.Which can further help the innovation-driven strategy and enable China to seize the technological commanding heights in the international economic competition and cooperation.Based on the important realistic background of China’s optimization needs of business environment and urban technology innovation,this paper systematically conducts theoretical and empirical research on the impact of business environment on urban technology innovation.Firstly,based on sorting out and summarizing related researches on business environment and urban technology innovation,and based on the theory of innovation ecosystem and governance theory,this paper establishes a theoretical mechanism by which business environment affects urban technology innovation.Secondly,based on the four regulatory elements of urban government services environment,legal environment,ecological environment and market environment,and four input elements of urban public services,innovation incentives,financial services and human resources as the framework.By including two types of variables: outcome variables and policy variables,this paper systematically measures and analyzes the indices and characteristics of China’s urban business environment in the past decade.Thirdly,one purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the agglomeration characteristics of the business environment components on urban technology innovation.Therefore,this paper conducts a configuration analysis on the impact model of China’s business environment on urban technology innovation,and conducts empirical analysis such as necessity analysis and sufficiency analysis of case practice.Fourthly,another purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the inter-system open interaction characteristics of the business environment on urban technology innovation.Therefore,this paper empirically analyzes the spatial effect of China’s business environment ecology on urban technology innovation.The direct effect and indirect effect are defined from the level of integrity and heterogeneity.Finally,combining the realistic background and summarizing the research conclusions,this paper puts forward public policy suggestions to optimize the business environment and enhance the capability of urban technology innovation.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The level of business environment in most cities in China has improved significantly over time,but the business environment in China’s cities is unbalanced at multiple levels.From the perspective of subdivision,most cities have more balanced rankings in the four sub-items of the investment section,while the four sub-items of the regulatory section are ranked less balanced.From regional perspective,the advantages of some municipalities directly under the Central Government,cities under separate state planning,and provincial capitals have gradually expanded.The business environment index shows the characteristics of decreasing in eastern,western and central regions.Its growth rate shows a decreasing trend in the eastern,central and western regions.In the past decade,the problem of uneven regional business environment has slightly increased.Compared with the gap between regions,the gap within the region is the main reason for the gap in the overall business environment.And its contribution to the total gap shows the characteristics of decreasing in the east,the middle and the west.(2)A single business environment element does not constitute a necessary condition for urban high or non-high technological innovation.This paper identifies five types of urban high technology innovation driven models.The efficiency-led urban business environment has relatively low requirements for input elements: "efficiency adjustment-infrastructure and finance" path and "efficiency adjustment-incentives and manpower" path.Externality-solving urban business environment ecology has relatively high requirements for input elements: "law and vitality adjustment-incentive" path,"law adjustment-infrastructure and incentive" path and "green adjustment-full input elements" path.It is difficult to produce high technology innovation solely relying on the accumulation and combination of input environment.The urban high technology innovation configuration has the participation of adjustment elements,and the adjustment elements are mostly at the core.The four configurations that produce non-high technology innovation and the configurations that produce high technology innovation are asymmetry,the former all lack the innovation incentive elements.(3)The spatial effect of business environment on urban technology innovation shows that the direct effect is significantly positive.The optimization of a city’s business environment has a significant promoting effect on the city’s technology innovation.Indirect effects were significantly negative.The improvement of the business environment of surrounding cities will have a crowding out effect on technology innovation in the city.The inter-city competition effect is larger than the demonstration effect.From the perspective of sub-dimensions,the direct effect of regulatory business environment on urban technology innovation is higher than that of input business environment.The direct effects of the eight sub-items of business environment on urban technology innovation are all significantly positive,and the law environment is relatively the highest.Only the government affairs environment,law environment,public services and financial services have significant negative indirect effects on urban technology innovation.From the perspective of regions,the direct effect is significant in the eastern,central and western regions.Direct effect of the eastern region is significantly stronger than the other regions.The negative spatial effect of the business environment of surrounding cities on local urban technology innovation mainly comes from the eastern region.The policy implications contained in the research are as follows.Firstly,we should establish a multi-cooperative governance mechanism for the business environment and promote the construction of an innovation system.The construction of a business environment ecosystem should proceed from the levels of awareness,system and channel to ensure the level and synergy of the participants.Secondly,we should develop a business environment focused on R&D funds and R&D talents,and improve the level of urban technology innovation from the perspective of technology innovation process.Thirdly,we should build a characteristic coupling model of the urban business environment,and improve the level of urban technology innovation according to local conditions.When the city’s input factor environment is relatively weak,we should learn from the efficiency-led business environment development model,such as Urumqi,Yinchuan,Longyan,Jinan,Kunming and other cities.When the city’s input factors are relatively abundant,the externality-solving business environment development model should be used for reference,such as Zhengzhou,Xi’an,Changsha,Nantong,Weifang,and Chongqing.For cities that seek to escape from low technology innovation levels,they need to focus on developing an innovation incentive environment.Fourthly,In order to promote the positive direct effect,we should emphasize the overall development of the urban business environment system,and develop the technology innovation capability among cities in a balanced manner.We should use differentiated policies and assessments to improve the business environment in the central and western regions and underdeveloped cities in the region.At the same time,to suppress negative indirect effects,we should enhance the demonstration effect of government affairs environment,legal environment,public services and financial services through on-site inspections,digital platforms and other means of exchanging experiences.