Research On The Impact Of Technology Innovation On Firm International Performance:Based On The Digital Institution View

In recent years,digital technology has flourished globally and become an effective tool for firms to explore international markets and improve their international performance.Based on the dynamic game theory mechanism analysis and empirical studies,this paper explores the impact of digital technology innovation on the international performance of Chinese firms;and introduces the domestic digital institutional environment as a situational variable into the research framework to investigate the moderating effect of digital institutional environments at different levels of development on the relationship between the level of digital technology innovation and firms’ international performance.In this paper,data related to 268 enterprises in the core industries of China’s digital economy from 2012-2019 were selected.A fixed-effects model is used to demonstrate the relationship between the level of digital technology innovation and the international performance of firms and the change of the relationship under the perspective of digital institutions.The Heckman two-stage method and lagged effects model are also used for robustness testing.The empirical study finds that the quadratic term of the level of digital technology innovation is significantly and positively related to the international performance of firms,and the coefficient of the quadratic interaction term of the level of digital technology innovation and digital institutional environment is significantly positive.Subsequently,subsample regressions were conducted and interesting inconsistencies were found between the regression results of manufacturing firms and service firms.Based on this,the paper concludes that the level of digital technology innovation and the international performance of firms show a U-shaped relationship that first decreases and then increases,and the higher the level of development of the digital institutional environment,the more the U-shaped relationship between digital technology innovation and the internationalization performance of firms is strengthened.In the sub-sample regression scenario,the findings for manufacturing firms are consistent with those for the whole sample of firms,while service firms show a polarized L-shaped relationship between the level of digital technology innovation and firms’ international performance due to the specificity of their business,the influence of national policies and the geographical stickiness of their services.Based on the above findings,this paper makes recommendations at the firm level-how firms can engage in digital innovation and how firms can improve their own use of digital technology-and at the national level-how governments can build appropriate national and international digital institutional environments to enhance the positive incentives of digital technology innovation on firms’ international performance.This paper analyzes the relationship between digital technology innovation and firms’ internationalization performance from the unique perspective and theoretical framework of digital institutional environment,and proposes relevant recommendations at both firm and national levels,paper has both theoretical and practical implications.