The Asymmetric Influence Of The Structure Of Government Funds On Research Performance In Universities

The reform of S&T funding(science and technology funding)is an important part of optimizing resource allocation and is an urgent issue to be solved for building an innovative country.At present,competitive funding and noncompetitive funding are the main funding structure of the Chinese government’s S&T funding to universities.The ‘funding effect’ indicates that the nature of research funding determines the characteristics of research results,and there are obvious differences between competitive and non-competitive government funding in terms of incentive degree,research freedom and diversity of results.Therefore,this paper attempts to explore the asymmetric influence of government funding structure on university research performance,focusing on how competitive and non-competitive funding affects innovation output in different levels of universities and disciplines,with a view to providing some practical guidance for the high-quality development of Chinese universities and the national research management reform.Based on this background,this paper defines the concepts of competitive and non-competitive government S&T funding and research performance based on the New Public Management Theory,Market Failure Theory and Resource Dependence Theory,and investigates the asymmetric effects of government funding structure on research performance of universities from two dimensions:macro-organizational level and micro-individual level.Firstly,at the macroorganizational level,a dynamic panel data model is used to empirically analyze the direct effect of government funding structure on the overall research performance of universities and the moderating effect of university type.It was found that the structure of government S&T funding has an asymmetric effect on the overall research performance of universities,among which competitive government funding has an inverted U-shaped effect on the research performance of universities and non-competitive government S&T funding has a positive effect on the research performance of universities,and the type of universities has a heterogeneous moderating effect on the relationship between the structure of government funding and basic and applied research innovation.Secondly,at the micro-individual level,a negative binomial regression model was used to empirically analyze the direct effect of government funding structure on the research performance of university researchers and the moderating effect of discipline type.It was found that in the basic research area,competitive and noncompetitive government S&T funding had asymmetric effects on the scientific research performance of researchers,and the type of discipline has a different moderating effect;in the applied research area,competitive and non-competitive government S&T funding had consistent positive effects on engineering researchers.By conducting research at the above two levels,this study further reveals the relationship between government funding structure and scientific research performance of universities,broadens the research horizon of scientific research innovation in universities,and provides certain reference significance for innovating scientific research management mode,improving scientific research management system and upgrading scientific research management level.