| Enhancing regional innovation capacity and improving the innovation ecosystem is an important goal of the construction of science and technology business incubators in China.However,while the scale of China’s technology business incubators has grown rapidly in recent years,the regional innovation capacity and innovation and entrepreneurship level have been relatively slow to improve,and the relationship between the construction of technology business incubators and the regional innovation and entrepreneurship level has yet to be thoroughly examined.On the other hand,after 30 years of construction and development,the operation mode of incubators is facing challenges such as high homogeneity,excessive government intervention,and difficulty in releasing vitality,etc.How to achieve quantity and quality of technology business incubators is a practical problem that needs to be systematically discussed.Research on science and technology business incubators has seldom sorted out the40-year evolution of "science and technology business incubators" and its knowledge base,which is important for accurately grasping future research hotspots and seeking theoretical breakthroughs in this field;when evaluating the performance of science and technology business incubators,most of the research objects are individuals,and the impact on regional innovation and entrepreneurship is rare.The impact on the level of regional innovation and entrepreneurship is rarely seen.Focusing on the quality of regional innovation and entrepreneurship and understanding the mechanism of the role of technology business incubators in influencing regional innovation and entrepreneurship,more key variables need to be explored,as well as the situational conditions for technology business incubators to enhance innovation and entrepreneurship.In this study,924 core journals of science and technology business incubators from SSCI and CSSCI sources at home and abroad in the past 40 years are analyzed bibliometrically to uncover the knowledge base of science and technology business incubators from the subject system,environment system and research themes of science and technology business incubators.Based on this,an analytical framework of technology business incubators affecting regional innovation and entrepreneurship levels is constructed,and a panel data model,mediating effect model,and moderating model for 30provinces(cities and autonomous regions)from 2013-2018 are used to empirically test whether technology business incubators enhance regional innovation capacity and entrepreneurship levels.This study attempts to understand why technology business incubators can play this role by further mining data on variables such as regional cultural cohesion and policy support during this time period to explore which types of contexts better serve as incentives.The theoretical foundations for describing and explaining technology business incubation are revenue-risk theory,principal-agent theory,resource-based theory,"triple helix theory," and constructivist theory.Technology business incubators significantly improve the level of regional innovation and entrepreneurship,in which the region increases the total number of utility model and design patent applications granted and the number of new start-ups,while the promotion effect on the number of invention patent applications granted and entrepreneurial activity is weaker.This result still holds after a series of robustness tests such as excluding the sample of municipalities directly under the central government,adopting random effects model and spatial econometric model.The quality of regional innovation and entrepreneurship as characterized by the number of granted patent applications and entrepreneurial activity implies that improving the quality of regional innovation and entrepreneurship is a "breakthrough" in the construction of technology business incubators,which requires the government to coordinate and rationalize the layout of innovation and entrepreneurial resources to reduce negative externalities.After understanding the incentive role that technology business incubators can play,it is found that technology business incubators can enhance regional innovation by increasing the scale of regional venture capital and incubation funds to minimize the difficult dilemma of innovation financing constraints for incubatees and reduce excessive government intervention;in addition,the implementation of market-based policy instruments can make the effect of technology business incubators in stimulating regional innovation and entrepreneurship more obvious.At the same time,due to the differences in resource endowment,geographic location,and transportation conditions in different regions,the motivation and thinking behind the construction of science and technology business incubators differs from region to region,so the comprehensive impact of science and technology business incubators nationwide cannot be viewed in a simple "one-size-fits-all" manner.This differentiated impact is mainly reflected in the dimensions of regional scale heterogeneity and cultural cohesion heterogeneity: technology business incubators have significantly contributed to the level of innovation in the eastern region,and have also significantly increased the number of private enterprise registrations and entrepreneurial activity in the central and western regions,and have shown a significant marginal incremental effect on provincial scale.The effect of technology business incubators on regional innovation and entrepreneurship levels is more effective in high cultural cohesion regions.This finding helps identify the policy support approach and focus of technology business incubators in different regions,and also provides evidence to support the setting of differentiated technology business incubator construction goals in different regions. |
