Digital Economy and Firms'Innovation Catering Behavior:An Empirical Study on Information Alleviating the Distortion Effects of Policies
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that"innovation is the core element in the overall situation of China's modernization,and we should insist on optimizing the allocation of innovation resources,deepening the reform of the science and technology system,and enhancing the overall effectiveness of the national innovation system."On the way to becoming an innovation powerhouse,the government's innovation incentive policies have not only injected new vitality and motivation into firms'R&D and innovation but also led to the innovation challenge of firms using information advantages to adopt innovative catering behavior,counteracting the original intention of policies.In recent years,China's digital economy has achieved rapid growth with the rise of the technological revolution and the guidance of national policies and served as an important driving force for promoting high-quality economic development.However,whether the digital economy can inhibit firms'innovation catering behavior remains unanswered,and it is of great significance for understanding the interaction between government and firms against the background of government innovation incentive policies in the digital economy era.For a long time,China has attached great importance to the development of high-tech firms and put forward clear requirements for their recognition conditions.Therefore,considering the reform of high-tech firms'recognition conditions in 2008,this study selects Chinese listed high-tech firms from 2008 to 2020 as the sample.Based on the information asymmetry theory,this study explores the direct effects,contextual effects,mechanisms,and economic effects of the digital economy on firms'innovation catering behavior.The research results reveal that the development of the regional digital economy can inhibit the innovation catering behavior of local firms,and this inhibiting effect is mainly attributed to the increase in the number of employees in the digital industry.The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the inhibiting effect of the digital economy on innovation catering behavior is stronger for non-state firms,small and medium-sized firms,firms in a low competition environment,and firms in a low marketization environment.The mechanism test indicates that the inhibiting effect of the digital economy on innovation catering behavior is achieved by reducing information asymmetry between firms and the market.For the economic impacts,the digital economy not only directly affects firms'innovation output but also indirectly improves their innovation output by reducing their innovation catering behavior.The contributions of this study lie in four aspects.First,regarding the research perspective,this study focuses on the strategic interaction between government policies and firms'behavior and combines the digital economy with firms'innovation catering behavior to build a linkage mechanism between the digital economy development and industrial policy implementation.It responds to the call in recent studies for more investigation into"how to ensure that the implementation of government innovation incentives does not counteract the original intentions of policies."Second,there are few empirical studies on the mediating mechanism of information asymmetry in the existing literature.Through large sample data,this study further supports the application of information asymmetry theory in digital economy research,enriching the research results of the digital economy to break the"information silo"phenomenon.Third,this study empirically examines the direct and indirect effects of the digital economy on firms'innovation output and provides theoretical evidence for the economic impacts of the digital economy inhibiting firms'innovation catering behavior.Finally,for the practical significance,this study not only provides a possible explanation and a solution for the issues of"high input,high quantity,weak quality and low efficiency"of current scientific and technological innovation practice but also provides a new perspective and micro-level evidence for reducing firms'innovation catering behavior and improving the policy of identifying high-tech firms.
Digital EconomyInnovation Catering BehaviorInformation AsymmetryIndustrial Policy
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
