Public Opinion Attention And Quality Upgrade Of China's Export Products

In the increasingly competitive international market,how to achieve export transformation and upgrading,optimize the economic structure,and realize the leap of export product quality to the key link of the value chain is a major challenge for the transition of China's economy from the stage of rapid growth to the stage of high-quality development.This article does not consider the factors affecting the export quality upgrade from the perspective of traditional endowments,such as enterprise productivity,enterprise R&D and other material,but from the perspective of intangible resources to study the role of public opinion in improving the quality of export products.In order to obtain micro-enterprise-level data,this article uses Baidu search engine and Python crawler language to obtain the public opinion attention of export companies from 2000 to 2011,and quantify the public opinion impact index at the enterprise level.Calculate the quality of export products under the regression method by using the enterprise data of China Customs Database and China Industrial Enterprise Database from 2000 to 2011.The basic regression adopts a fixed-effect model to control factors such as the life span of the enterprise,government subsidies,capital-labor ratio,and human capital level.Empirical test shows that the public opinion attention of export enterprises has a significant positive impact on the quality upgrade of export products.And combined the Heckman two-step method to further verify the accuracy of the conclusion.As for the mechanism,this article analyzes the influence path of public opinion attention on the export product quality,according to the theory of attention allocation and the theory of information asymmetry.The empirical regression results confirm the prediction of the theoretical mechanism,and the results show that the export product quality will be significantly improved due to the increase in public opinion formed by media reports.Part of the reason is that public opinion influences the allocation of consumer attention,affects market demand,and produces export quality upgrades under the path of market demand expansion;the second reason is that public opinion has significantly increased the possibility of enterprises obtaining longer-term loans,and the improvement of the debt maturity structure has eased the financing constraints of enterprises,thereby realizing the upgrade of export quality under credit acquisition.After using the number of domain names in each province as an instrumental variable to replace the core explanatory variable public opinion attention,and controlling the endogenous problem,the impact of public opinion attention on export quality is still stable.Changing the measurement method of export product quality to the unit value of export products,the positive influence of public opinion on export quality is still obvious at the 1%level.Further differentiate the sample,the export product quality of state-owned enterprises has been the most affected by public opinion,indicating that the state-owned enterprises have provoked the mainstay in improving the reputation of"Made in China".The export quality of processing trade enterprises and general trade enterprises has little difference in the influence of public opinion;The quality of export products of low export intensity enterprises is more affected by public opinion than high export intensity enterprises;Combining SITC codes to carry out different group regression by the product technology level shows that the impact of public opinion on the improvement of export product quality with medium and low technology levels exceeds the impact on high-tech products.The possible reason is that the medium-tech and low-tech products have higher substitution elasticity in the market,which means the market advantage is not obvious,so its endogenous motivation to improve the product quality is stronger due to the influence of public opinion.Combining theoretical analysis and empirical results,this article reminds the government and export companies to pay attention to the role of informal institutional factors in the country's economic transformation and development.(1)The government should pay attention to the elements of public opinion,and rationally guide the attention of public opinion to supervise and urge Chinese export enterprises to improve the quality of export products,and improve their status and international competitiveness in the division of international value chain.(2)Export companies should pay attention to their own "public opinion reputation",enhance product image and international vision,grasp the battlefield of international public opinion,strive to enhance the influence of international public opinion,calmly deal with the hidden trade barriers that have quietly emerged in public opinion in recent years,and achieve a high level globalization.(3)Promote the reform and development of the media industry,maintain the independence of the news media and its performance of social supervision functions,and strengthen the professional quality training of news media practitioners.(4)Strengthen the construction of infrastructure such as 5G communications,increase the breadth of information dissemination and the speed of information retrieval,further weaken market information asymmetry to improve export performance.