Uncertainty Perception and Enterprise Innovation Peer Effects
China is striving to promote the development mode from factor driven to innovation-driven transformation.Enterprises as the most important micro subject in economic activities,its innovation activities are becoming a new engine to drive high-quality economic development.R&D investment are highly irreversible,and enterprises have to consider not only their internal financial status and governance structure,but also the economic and political environment in which they are located before making innovation decisions.The fluctuation range of China's economic policies has been expanding since 2007,and it is difficult for enterprises to accurately grasp the trend of economic policy changes,which affects their expectations and confidence in the future,so that they can maintain a cautious attitude towards high-risk and long-cycle innovation activities.In the current economic and social environment full of uncertainty,the peer effect provides a new way to deal with the above problems.Before making innovation decisions,enterprises will refer to the innovation decisions of their peers to mitigate the uncertain risks of innovation activities.In addition to its own characteristics and the influence of stakeholders,the behavior of peer enterprises has become an important basis for strategic decision-making.Then,will the perception of economic policy uncertainty affect the enterprise innovation peer effect?Based on the annual reports of listed enterprises from 2011 to 2021,this paper uses the text mining method to extract the specific text content of enterprise annual reports,measure the perceived degree of economic policy uncertainty,break through the assumption that enterprise decisions are mutually independent,and then explore the impact of uncertainty perception on enterprise innovation peer effect.The results show that uncertainty perception contributes to the peer effects of enterprises innovation.Mechanism analyses show that when follower enterprises with information disadvantage perceive rising economic policy uncertainty,they tend to imitate the innovation decisions of leader enterprises with information advantage,but the reverse is not true;Moreover,the worse the external information environment,the more significant the impact of uncertainty perception on the peer effects of enterprise innovation,which is in line with the expectations of information learning theory.Heterogeneity analyses show that the innovation peer effects of non-state-owned enterprises,eastern region enterprises,and high-technology firms are susceptible to the impact of perceived economic policy uncertainty.The possible marginal contributions of this paper:First,when exploring the impact of uncertainty perception on enterprises'behavioural decisions,existing studies have not taken into account the interaction between important affiliates and enterprises'behavioural decisions.Alternatively,when analysing issues related to economic policy uncertainty and enterprises investment peer effects,failure to distinguish differences in the perception of economic policy fluctuations by micro enterprises.This paper follows a rigorous logic and employs scientific methods to examine the impact of uncertainty perception on the peer effects of enterprises innovation,which to some extent expands the research boundaries of the literature related to the peer effect and economic policy uncertainty.Second,based on the theory of information learning,this paper explores the driving factors behind the influence of economic policy uncertainty perception on innovation peer effect,and opens the"black box"of imitation behavior of enterprises innovation activities.Third,we examined the heterogeneity of the impact of uncertainty perception on the innovation homogeneity effect at the levels of the nature of property rights,regions,and technological traits of industries.The relevant findings highlight the differences in learning behaviours of enterprises'innovation decision-making under the perspective of uncertainty perception,which is not only instructive for effectively resolving uncertainty shocks,but also provides useful thoughts on how enterprises can design scientific interaction strategies for innovation activities.
perception of economic policy uncertaintyenterprise innovationpeer effectsinformation learning
万方数据
维普
