The Influence Of Internet Development On Chinese Regional Innovation Gap

The imbalance of economic development has become one of the causes of the main contradictions in our current economic society.The widening gap of urban innovation will lead to regional economic differentiation and the serious imbalance of regional economy will hinder the orderly development of a region or country.The biggest feature of the Internet is interconnection,which will make up for the lack of agglomeration advantage of small and medium-sized cities and narrow the gap between cities by reducing the importance of spatial proximity.This paper uses panel data from 2009 to 2021 of 30 provinces in China to study the impact of Internet development on regional innovation gap.Combing relevant literature and theories,expatiating the influence mechanism of Internet development on regional innovation gap;Based on the global principal component model,the development level of the Internet was measured,and the regional innovation gap was measured by the Lie difference of patent grant volume score.On this basis,the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of the Internet development and regional innovation gap were revealed.The direct influence of Internet development on regional innovation gap and regional heterogeneity were analyzed.The threshold regression model was constructed to test the nonlinear influence of Internet development on regional innovation gap.To examine the influence mechanism of Internet development on regional innovation gap from digital inclusive finance and each sub-dimension;Based on the above research results,relevant policy recommendations are proposed.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)The development level of the Internet in China is on the rise as a whole,with the average value of the provinces rising from 0.567 in 2010 to 0.600 in 2015 and 0.627 in 2020;Compared with 2010,the growth rate of Internet development level in all provinces in 2015 was basically the same,but after 2015,the spatial distribution of all provinces increased significantly,showing obvious spatial heterogeneity and non-convergence of differences.Compared with the central and western regions,the Internet development level in the eastern region is generally higher.There is also an obvious gap in the development level of the Internet within the western regions,among which the development level of the Internet in Sichuan Province is much higher than that of other provinces,and that of Inner Mongolia is higher than the average level of the western region.(2)The development of the Internet has narrowed the regional innovation gap.From the perspective of the total samples,the development of the Internet has significantly narrowed the regional innovation gap,and there is a nonlinear effect,the Internet development on the narrowing of the regional innovation gap is first decreased and then increased.From the perspective of sub-sample,the effect of Internet development on narrowing the regional innovation gap has passed the significance level of 1%,and this effect is most obvious in the western region,followed by the central region and the eastern region.(3)In addition to directly affecting the regional innovation gap,the development of the Internet is also regulated by the level of financial development.When the development of regional finance is high,the Internet has a strong role in narrowing the regional innovation gap;when the development level of regional finance is low,the Internet has a weak role in narrowing the regional innovation.