区域协同创新会促进新质生产力发展吗？——来自中国城市群的经验证据

Will Regional Collaborative Innovation Promote the Development of New Productive Forces?—Empirical Evidence from Chinese Urban Agglomerations

摘要: 新质生产力是推动区域高质量发展的强劲推动力和支撑力，研究其驱动因素对于区域发展至关重要。本研究基于区域协同发展视角，2011~2021年中国14个城市群181个城市数据，实证分析区域协同创新对新质生产力的影响及非线性特征，并对其作用的异质性进行检验。研究发现：1) 区域协同创新对新质生产力水平的提升有显著影响，该结论在通过多种稳健性检验后依然成立。2) 城市群协同创新对新质生产力的影响具有先减后增的非线性特征。3) 异质性分析发现，相较于发达城市群和中心城市，欠发达城市群的非中心城市通过区域协同创新更能促进新质生产力水平提升。研究结论从欠发达地区的视角提供了一个崭新的思路：欠发达地区借助协同创新，充分调动自身优势反而能够实现更大幅度的新质生产力的增长。为区域协同创新和提升新质生产力提供了理论支持，并丰富了相关实证研究。

Abstract: New productivity is a powerful driving force and support for promoting high-quality regional development, making the study of its driving factors crucial for regional progress. This study empirically analyzes the impact and nonlinear characteristics of regional collaborative innovation on new productivity, using data from 181 cities in 14 Chinese urban agglomerations from 2011 to 2021. It also examines the heterogeneity of this effect. The findings reveal that: 1) Regional collaborative innovation significantly enhances new productivity, and this conclusion holds true across various robustness checks. 2) The impact of collaborative innovation within urban agglomerations on new productivity exhibits a nonlinear characteristic, decreasing initially before increasing. 3) Heterogeneity analysis indicates that, compared to developed urban agglomerations and central cities, non-central cities in underdeveloped urban agglomerations benefit more from regional collaborative innovation in terms of improving new productivity. The study’s conclusions offer a novel perspective from the viewpoint of underdeveloped regions: leveraging collaborative innovation, these regions can harness their advantages to achieve substantial growth in new productivity. This provides theoretical support for regional collaborative innovation and the enhancement of new productivity, enriching the empirical research in this field.