Innovative coupling and coordination: Automobile and digital industries

Abstract

• Coupling evaluation model and the entropy method have been applied to measure the degree of integration between China's automobile and digital industries. • Predictions of the future development trends of the two industries were attempted. • Conclusions of the research revealed that China's automobile and digital industries are coupled, and 2018 is the turning point, from uncoordinated to coordinated. • The analysis results suggested that the characteristic contribution of China's automobile and digital industries are on the contrary. The coupling and coordination of automobile and digital industries are crucial for developing these industries and to promote the high-quality development of the automobile industry. In this study, a coupling evaluation model and a backpropagation (BP) neural network model were used to construct the coupling evolution trend of the coordinated development of these industries. The results showed that China's automobile and digital industries are coupled. 2018 was the turning point from uncoordinated to coordinated. It is predicted that the coupling coordination development degree will increase from 0.572 in 2019 to 0.739 in 2022. The main contribution of growth came from research and development investment in the automobile industry and fixed asset investment in the digital industry, which is a factor of development potential. However, the characteristic contribution of the digital industry comprised development efficiency, development potential, development scale, and development structure in the decreasing order, whereas the characteristic contribution of the automobile industry comprised the aforementioned parameters in the increasing order. The research results allow the development of industrial policies for the coupling and coordination of these industries.