Research On The Characteristics And Influencing Factors Of Smart City Policy Innovation Diffusion

The "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" and the 2035 long-term goal outline clearly propose to promote the construction of new smart cities by classification.The construction of smart cities that use the Internet of Things,5G,big data,cloud computing,artificial intelligence and other new generation information technologies to promote urban transformation and upgrading is considered to be the main tool to drive urban modernization and promote the refinement of urban governance,and is also the key to realize the modernization of government governance capabilities and governance systems.From the Notice on Carrying out the National Smart City Pilot Work issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People’s Republic of China in 2012 to the Notice on Continuing to Carry out the Evaluation of the Construction of New Smart Cities and Deeply Promoting the Healthy and Rapid Development of New Smart Cities issued by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2018,the issuance of central policy documents has played a certain role in guiding,regulating and ensuring the construction process of smart cities,It has greatly promoted the development of smart city construction.In 2010,Foshan City,Guangdong Province,took the lead in issuing the smart city policy at the prefecture-level city level.After 12 years of diffusion,172prefecture-level cities in the mainland of China have adopted the smart city policy by the end of 2021.The diffusion of this important policy innovation has aroused widespread concern in the academic community.What are the characteristics and laws of smart city policies in prefecture-level cities in the process of innovation diffusion? What factors will affect the innovation diffusion of smart city policies in prefecture-level cities and other key issues still need further investigation.Based on a clear understanding of public policy,smart city,policy innovation diffusion and other related concepts,and a clear understanding of the connotation of innovation diffusion theory,intergovernmental relations theory and new institutionalism theory,this thesis describes the process of China’s smart city policy innovation diffusion from the perspective of the origin,background and development process of smart city policy,taking China’s prefecture-level cities as the research object,and starting from the perspective of policy innovation diffusion,To explore the diffusion characteristics and influencing factors of smart city policy innovation in prefecture-level cities in China.First of all,China’s prefecture-level smart city policy conforms to the general characteristics of innovation diffusion.In terms of policy types,the majority are programs and plans,and the documents issued by the municipal party committee and the municipal government are the main ones.In terms of time dimension,there are obvious characteristics of S-shaped gradual diffusion.In terms of space dimension,there are two paths: vertical absorption and horizontal diffusion.The policy content tends to be refined in policy application and diversified in security resources.Secondly,scientifically identify the factors that affect the policy adoption of prefecture-level municipal governments.Through literature research and theoretical review,this thesis constructs a two-factor analysis framework of "external diffusion pressure-internal innovation power" for the diffusion of smart city policy innovation.With the adoption of smart city policies by prefecture-level municipal governments as the explanatory variables,it selects 9 explanatory variables,including policy pilot,provincial pressure,informatization development level,and egovernment level,and uses the event history analysis method to explore the influencing factors of policy adoption by prefecture-level cities.The results show that among the external diffusion pressure factors,the policy pilot has no significant impact on the diffusion of smart cities,while the provincial pressure has a significant positive impact on the diffusion of smart cities;Among the internal innovation driving factors,informatization level,e-government level,organizational resources,human resources and population size are the key factors to promote local government policy innovation,while the assumption that economic resources and urban area have a positive correlation with the diffusion of smart city policy innovation has not been supported.The above results show that when the prefecture-level municipal government adopts the smart city policy,it is not only a "marionette" driven by external pressure,but a bounded and rational innovation actor affected by the urban development conditions and policy resources.This thesis attempts to provide some policy implications for the subsequent diffusion of smart city policy innovation by comprehensively analyzing the characteristics and influencing factors of the diffusion of smart city policy innovation in China: strengthening the top-level design and optimizing the spatial pattern;Support provincial innovation and speed up diffusion;Strengthen inter-governmental interaction and improve learning methods;Improve infrastructure and improve governance efficiency;Coordinate development factors and optimize resource allocation;Avoid following the trend and enrich the policy content.