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| How Does the Digital Economy Release Innovation Dividends? The Theoretical Mechanism and Microscopic Evidences |
| Gao Houbin,Li Chenyang |
| (School of Business, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang 453007, China) |
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Abstract The development of the digital economy has injected new momentum into the innovation-driven strategy, which raises the question of whether and how the digital economy will release innovation dividends. Most of the existing literature focuses on the macro perspective, and uses national or regional level data to explore the impact of digital economy development on innovation performance. However, these studies ignore the impact of digital economy development on micro enterprise innovation capability. As enterprises are the micro main body of innovation, it is particularly important to analyze how the digital economy development affects the innovation capability of enterprises.#br#In view of this, the paper focuses on the micro effects of the digital economy. Firstly, it theoretically analyzes the internal mechanism of the impact of digital economy development on enterprise innovation performance. Secondly, drawing on the data of prefecture-level cities in China and the micro-data of listed companies from 2011 to 2019, it empirically studies the innovation effect of digital economy development and its mechanism. Thirdly, it applies the stepwise regression method to test the mediating effects of financing constraints, operating costs and knowledge diffusion. Finally, this paper examines the effects of heterogeneous factors, such as the nature of the enterprise, the degree of digitization and the city location of the enterprise on the innovation dividends of the digital economy.#br#This paper has yielded some important results. First, the digital economy development can significantly promote the innovation performance of enterprises. Specifically, the digital economy development improves both the quantity and the quality of enterprise innovation,and the promotion effect is greater for innovation quantity than innovation quality. The instrumental variable method is used to carry out endogenous test, and the results show that the benchmark effects are still robust. Second, the mechanism test shows that the digital economy development can improve the quantity and quality of enterprise innovation by mitigating financial constraints, reducing operating costs and promoting knowledge diffusion. Third, the heterogeneity test shows that the relationship between digital economy development and enterprise innovation performance is influenced by the ownership, digitization degree and location of enterprises. More specifically, the promotion effect of digital economy development on innovation performance of state-owned enterprises is stronger than that of non-state-owned enterprises. The higher digitalization degree of enterprise is, the stronger the impact of digital economy development on innovation performance will be. The innovation dividends released by digital economy are greater for enterprises located in central cities than that in non-central cities.#br#This paper has important theoretical contributions. Firstly, while previous studies focused on macro scale, this paper analyzes the impact of digital economy development on the enterprise innovation from the micro level, thus enriching the literature on micro effects of digital economy and providing empirical evidence for innovation effects of digital economy development. Secondly, this paper breaks through the generalization discussion of the mechanism of digital economy development on enterprise innovation in previous studies, and constructs a theoretical framework including financial constraints, operating costs and knowledge diffusion, unfolding the “black box” between digital economy development and enterprise innovation. Finally, this paper analyzes the heterogeneity at two levels of enterprise and region, and clarifies the boundary of digital economy's influence on enterprise innovation and deepens the relationship between digital economy development and enterprise innovation.#br#The findings of this paper have certain practical implications. The government should further vigorously promote the development of the digital economy, deeply optimize the innovation environment of enterprises, and effectively relieve financial constraints, reduce operating costs, and promote knowledge diffusion, so as to fully tap the role of digital economy development in promoting micro enterprise innovation and consolidate the micro foundation of innovation driven strategy. At the same time, managers should recognize the importance of digital transformation, actively embrace digital technology, and constantly increase investment in digital transformation, so as to more effectively obtain the innovation bonus generated by the digital economy development. In addition, the innovation effect of the digital economy development has regional differences which suggests that the government should pay attention to the balanced development of centraland non-central cities, especially accelerate the institutional reform of non-central cities, and effectively release the innovation dividend of the digital economy development.#br#
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Received: 29 June 2022
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