Government innovation awards, innovation funds acquisition and enterprise innovation

Abstract

Government innovation awards (GIAs) are not only important science and technology (S&T) policies for stimulating innovation but also serve as innovation honors for enterprises. Based on signaling theory and expectancy-value theory, we construct an enterprise innovation reputation model, consider GIAs as a signal of innovation reputation, and empirically analyze how GIAs affect enterprise innovation. The findings confirm that GIAs can promote enterprise innovation and that enterprises’ high-quality innovation is more strongly promoted than their low-quality innovation. As a signal of innovation reputation, GIAs can help enterprises obtain external government S&T funds and S&T financial funds. The results show that government S&T funds acquisition plays a significant mediating role between GIAs and enterprise innovation output. These findings reveal the effect and micro mechanism of GIAs on enterprise innovation, can help deepen the understanding of innovation reputation and enterprise high-quality innovation, and can provide implications for innovation awards and financial policy-making.