Useless Use - An Empirical Analysis Of The Impact Of Labor Leisure Time On Urban Innovation Capability

Innovation is the primary driving force for economic growth and social development,and it is the strategic support for the construction of a modern economic system.With the passage of time,today’s China is gradually shifting from mimic innovation focusing on absorbing foreign advanced technology to independent innovation focusing on accelerating the construction of its own industry-university-research system.From the perspective of city,China’s urbanization process has gradually entered to a stage characterized by high-quality innovation.Local governments have gradually realized that human capital-oriented innovation growth is the way out for today’s urban development.Only by continuously improving the innovation ability can we maintain the long-term stable growth of the urban economy and improve the overall competitiveness of the city in the background of supply-side structural reformation.Although the whole society has gradually formed a respect atomsphere for innovation,there is still no unified understanding of the growth source of innovation,especially the original innovation.Governments and entrepreneurs generally recognize innovation and its growth from the perspective of material input.Therefore,at present,the state and the government continue to increase financial support for science and technology to increase its innovation capacity,entrepreneurs increase the innovation ability of company by increasing their R & D expenditures as well as the duration of research staffs.The technology industry in China often has hidden rules that staffs should extend their working hours.Can longer working hours really promote the growth of innovation capacity? As the main subject of innovation,do people follow similar input-output laws as machines?Starting from city level,this article absorbs some scholars’ views that leisure can increase human capital and thus enhance social innovation ability,combining Becker’s time allocation theory to construct a micro-level explanation of individual innovation.The hypothesis model then extends from this to the interpretation of factors affecting innovation capabilities at the social level,and thus build a complete analytical framework.In order to test this theoretical hypothesis,this article uses the CLDS labor force survey database which contains working time statistics in various cities in 2012,2014 and 2016,and obtains the average working hours of workers in 79 cities.A panelregression model was constructed based on relevant economic data of these cities.An empirical analysis was made of the relationship between urban workers’ leisure time and urban innovation ability.Based on this,a robustness test,threshold model analysis and expansive research were conducted.The research results show that in today’s China,increasing rather than reducing the leisure time of workers can promote the capacity of urban innovation,and this promotion effect will become more significant with the abundance in city capital and the improvement of urban culture and human resources.Generally speaking,the higher the education and quality of the urban population,the stronger the enhance in innovation of increased leisure time;the higher the degree of urban infrastructure and economic development,the stronger the promotion effect of increased leisure time on innovation;The more positive the city culture is,the stronger the promotion effect of increased leisure time on innovation ability.Finally,the larger the city,the stronger the promotion effect of increased leisure time on innovation ability.The effect of leisure time on innovation growth depends heavily on phenomenan of urban and individual characteristics,which greatly enhances the reliability of the theoretical hypothesis in this paper.The main contribution of this article is that,lying in the research on the relationship between leisure and innovation,it breaks through the lack of macro-empirical process caused by sociological,psychological,and geographical scholars’ study because of their perspective limitation.It also improves the problem of lacking micro-mechanisms in former economists’ leisure research.The theory of time allocation is applied to the study of the relationship between leisure and innovation,and it is proposed that leisure has spatial heterogeneity.What’s more,a set of theoretical models that can be empirically tested are established at the city level.Finally,this theory is constructive and helpful for solving many social problems in today’s China.