Do Innovative Provincial Policies Promote the Optimization of Regional Innovation Ecosystems?

Innovative provinces are essential to innovative countries and robust support for constructing national and regional innovation systems. Based on the panel data of 28 provinces from 2016 to 2019, this paper builds a regional innovation ecosystem performance evaluation system from five dimensions: innovation subject, innovation environment, innovation resource, resource flow, and interaction intermediaries. The index weighting is carried out using the principal component analysis method, and the innovation ecosystem performance of various provinces is evaluated and analyzed to determine the regional distribution status of innovation ecosystem performance. Based on a multi-period difference-in-differences model, this paper empirically tests the impact of innovative provincial policies on the innovation ecosystem performance of each region in the former innovation development stage. The results show that innovative provincial policies significantly positively impact the regional innovation ecosystems, which are multi-dimensional, long-term, and stable. The three secondary indicators, including ecological composition, resource input, and circulation flow, show a positive impact. Further research reveals that the main pathways of the effects are promoting the expansion of innovation inputs and the increase of interaction intermediaries among innovation subjects. Finally, combining the contents and impact of the previous innovative provincial policies, this paper puts forward corresponding thoughts and suggestions for the next phase of regional pilot-type innovation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]