Research On The Role Of Digital Technology On The Innovation Efficiency Of Coal Resource-based Cities

Coal resource-based cities play the role of energy supply in China’s economic development and social life,and have made great contributions to accelerating the development of China’s industrialization.However,in recent years,with the change of the stage of economic development in China,the extensive economic development model formed by coal resource-based cities for a long time has shown great inadaptability,so it is urgent to realize innovation-driven development.For coal resource-based cities with limited investment in innovation factors,improving innovation efficiency is the key to achieve innovation-driven development.The digital science and technology revolution and the fourth industrial revolution represented by the Internet,5G,cloud computing and artificial intelligence are profoundly changing the production and life style of human beings.Whether coal resource-based cities can make use of digital technology to catch up with innovation efficiency and enter the innovation-driven high-quality development model is a new opportunity given to coal resource-based cities by the times.It is also an important opportunity for academia to explore coal resource-based cities to improve innovation efficiency in the new era.First of all,this paper takes Marx’s thought of scientific and technological innovation,the scientific and technological innovation thought of the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and Schumpeter’s innovation theory as the theoretical basis.Combined with the characteristics of economic development of coal resource-based cities,this paper constructs the analysis framework of innovation efficiency of coal resourcebased cities.It also introduces digital technology into it and analyzes the mechanism of digital technology on the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities;Secondly,it measures the digital technology level and innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities;Third,it tests the action mechanism by using benchmark regression model,intermediary effect model and threshold effect model;Fourth,taking coal resource-based cities in Shanxi Province as an example,this paper analyzes the practical experience and deficiency of digital technology in improving the innovation efficiency of coal resourcebased cities;Finally,Finally,combined with the mechanism analysis and empirical test results,this paper puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions for coal resourcebased cities to use digital technology to improve innovation efficiency.The main viewpoints and conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Through the mechanism analysis,it is concluded that digital technology can promote the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities,including direct and indirect effects.The direct function means that by changing the labor tools of innovation activities,on the one hand,digital technology can improve the data processing ability and scientific decision-making ability of R & D activities,accelerate the speed of knowledge spillover and improve the quality of workers;on the other hand,it can bring about changes in the organizational form of innovation activities,which is conducive to the allocation efficiency of innovation elements and the efficiency of network-based collaborative innovation,and then improve the efficiency of innovation.The indirect effect includes three paths: first,digital technology can optimize the industrial basis of innovation activities by improving the efficiency and quality of traditional industries and the proportion of digital industries in coal resource-based cities.In particular,the digital transformation of the extractive industry can release the crowding-out effect on manufacturing and innovation activities.Second,digital technology can reduce the institutional cost and transaction cost of innovation activities by promoting the technical integration of government and market in coal resource-based cities.Third,digital technology can improve the efficiency of innovation by optimizing the main structure of innovation in coal resource-based cities and increasing the proportion of private enterprises.However,whether directly or indirectly,it will be affected by the quality of urban labor force and the level of digital infrastructure,so that digital technology has a non-linear effect on innovation efficiency.(2)Using entropy method and DEA-Malmquist index to calculate,the overall digital technology level and innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities are constantly improving.Specifically,the improvement of digital infrastructure is the main way to improve the digital technology level of coal resource-based cities,and the development level of digital industry is higher than the level of digital fusion;from the point of view of single factor innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities,its innovation efficiency is far lower than the national average level,and the investment intensity of scientific and technological personnel and R & D capital is also far lower than that of developed cities.From the perspective of total factor innovation efficiency,36 of the 46 sample cities are completely driven by scale expansion.According to the different characteristics of innovation efficiency,this paper divides the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities into three types: technology-led innovation efficiency,intensive innovation efficiency and scale-driven innovation efficiency.(3)Using the benchmark regression model,it is found that digital technology can improve the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities,and plays a relatively important role in improving technical efficiency in innovation activities.It shows that digital technology plays a greater role in promoting resource allocation efficiency and scale efficiency in the innovation activities of coal resource-based cities than in promoting technological progress.(4)Using the intermediary effect model,it is found that digital technology can improve the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities by optimizing industrial structure,improving the level of marketization and increasing the proportion of private enterprises,and the effects of the three intermediary variables are different.Digital technology effectively improves the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities through three intermediary variables,mainly promoting the technological progress of innovation activities,but there is no intermediary effect on technical efficiency,indicating that digital technology plays a direct role in the improvement of technical efficiency.In addition,in terms of the improvement of innovation efficiency,the intermediary effects of market-oriented reform,industrial structure and the proportion of private enterprises decrease in turn.In terms of technological progress,digital technology plays the most important role in promoting technological progress in innovative activities by optimizing industrial structure.(5)Using the threshold effect model,it is found that the quality of labor force and the level of digital infrastructure are the threshold variables of the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities affected by digital technology.The quality of labor force has a double threshold effect on the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities,a single threshold effect on technological progress,no threshold effect on technical efficiency,and the threshold value for technological progress is less than that for innovation efficiency.Digital infrastructure has a single threshold effect on innovation efficiency,technical efficiency and technological progress of coal resource-based cities,and the threshold value of innovation efficiency and technical efficiency is higher than that of technological progress.(6)Through the case study,it is found that the coal resource-based cities in Shanxi Province can effectively improve the innovation efficiency by promoting the construction of intelligent mines,the construction of digital government and the proportion of private enterprises.and the impact of different digital paths on innovation efficiency is different.Changzhi City plays the greatest role in improving innovation efficiency through the continuous improvement of digital technology and integration with traditional industries;Datong City also plays a relatively important role in improving innovation efficiency through the introduction and cultivation of digital industry;while Luliang City simply depends on the introduction of big data industry,and the lack of integration and development with the city makes the role of digital technology in improving innovation efficiency is limited.(7)Combined with theoretical and empirical analysis,this paper proposes to improve the labor mode of innovative activities,speed up the digital transformation of traditional industries,enhance the digital governance ability of the government,promote the quality increment of private enterprises,cultivate and reserve digital skilled personnel and improve digital infrastructure are the key measures for coal resource-based cities to use digital technology to improve innovation efficiency.The innovation of this paper is to construct a framework for analyzing the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities,which includes micro-innovation activities,macro-innovation environment and basic conditions of innovation.In the existing literature,the analysis of the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities is too focused on the coal industry or more comprehensive,but the characteristics of resourcebased economy is not prominent.The analysis framework proposed in this paper is based on a comprehensive analysis of the influencing factors of innovation efficiency and combined with the economic development characteristics of coal resource-based cities,which makes up for the shortcomings of the existing research.Second,it systematically studies the action mechanism of digital technology on the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities from the perspective of digital technology,which provides a new analytical perspective for the study of innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities.it also forms a relatively systematic research from three aspects: direct,indirect and nonlinear,which enriches the research results of the impact of digital technology on regional innovation efficiency.Third,taking the input and output of the innovation activities of coal resource-based cities as the research object,it depicts the pattern and characteristics of the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities at the prefecture-level city level and classifies them into types.It complements the deficiency of the existing research on the evaluation of innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities.The shortcomings of this paper are as follows: first,there is no heterogeneity analysis based on different types of innovation efficiency.In this paper,the innovation efficiency of coal resource-based cities is divided into three types.However,due to the limited number of samples in different types of cities,reasonable heterogeneity analysis can not be carried out.In the future,sample cities can be extended to county-level cities to increase sample size for specific analysis.Second,due to the limited availability of data,there is no empirical test to test the effect of digital transformation of coal mining industry on the efficiency of urban innovation.In the future,we can further obtain micro-data through research and other means to test.Third,the evaluation of the digital technology level of coal resource-based cities needs to be further improved.In the future,the city’s digital government affairs,the value of data elements and other factors can be included in the evaluation index system,in order to evaluate the digital technology level of coal resource-based cities more comprehensively.