A Study On The Impact Of Digital Services Trade Barriers On The Innovation Performance Of Companies

The new trend of information technology revolution has begun the era of digital economy and the digitization of international trade in services has deepened.The scale of China’s digital services trade is huge.Digital service trade is gradually developing into the mainstream of China’s service trade,and promoting the opening up of digital service trade has become a key objective of China’s high-quality economic development.As a vital role in economic transformation and upgrading,the high-quality development of enterprises is driven by innovation.Company’s innovation activities often benefit from the support of digital services.However,countries have launched various measures to restrict cross-border service trade in order to protect data security or industry development,etc.,which have an impact on the cross-border flow of digital services and make innovation of the companies suffer.According to the realistic needs of high-quality development of companies and economy,a correct understanding of the impact of digital service trade barriers on companies’ innovation performance is important for companies to cope with the complex trade environment to enhance their innovation performance,which can also provide evidence for promoting digital service trade development in China from a microscopic perspective.The paper provides an empirical test based on literature review and theoretical analysis of listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2014 to 2021.By constructing an industry penetration index of barriers,this paper extended the study of digital services trade restrictions at the national level to the micro level,with the aim of discussing the impact of digital services trade barriers on companies’ innovation performance and the moderating effects affecting the relationship between them.The research findings revealed that Digital service trade barriers significantly depress companies’ innovation performance,and this conclusion remained robust after variable replacement,sample reduction,and endogeneity treatments.Digital services trade barriers raise the transaction costs of companies’ innovation projects,weaken the knowledge spillovers from digital services trade,and are detrimental to the innovation performance of companies.But this negative effect is stronger for R&D output of companies with higher technological value and higher innovation difficulty,and it is more severe in the innovation output of high-tech companies.Companies’ digital transformation level and absorptive capacity have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between the digital service barriers and companies’ innovation performance,while the moderating effect of companies’ traditional governance level is not significant.Therefore,when firms’ digital transformation level increases and their absorptive capacity improves,the negative impact of digital services trade barriers on their innovation output level will be weakened.Based on the results of theoretical derivation and empirical testing,this paper proposes recommendations for the country and companies,suggesting that China should expand the degree of openness,minimize digital service trade barriers,and implement digitalization strategies to improve the supply quality and supply capacity of the domestic digital service market.In the face of endless barriers,companies should promote comprehensive digital transformation and strengthen their innovation absorption capacity to alleviate the pressure of digital service trade barriers on their innovation activities.