Quantitative Evaluation of High-Tech Industry Policies Based on the PMC-Index Model: A Case Study of China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region

Abstract

High-tech industrial agglomeration plays a significant role in regional sustainable development. Local governments have issued many industrial policies to accelerate the development of high-tech industries in China. Evaluating high-tech industry policies from the perspective of regional industrial synergy can prevent problems in policy implementation and promote the industrial synergy in a region. For this purpose, taking China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region as a case, we evaluate seven policies governing the high-tech industry in this region by using the approach which integrates the policy modeling consistency index (PMC-Index) model and text mining. We propose an evaluation system with consideration of regional industrial synergy, which is based on the PMC-Index model. The results show that the lowest PMC-Index value of the seven policies is 5.30, the highest is 8.17, and the average is 6.67. Among the policies, four are of excellent or perfect grade and relatively comprehensive; three are of acceptable grade and relatively insufficient. The overall designs of the high-tech industrial policies are reasonable but there is still much room for improvement. According to the average scores of the main indicators, the policies function relatively poorly in terms of policy release agency, policy timeliness, policy type and policy receptor. The optimizations for the shortcomings of each policy are also suggested. This study may not only provide some enlightenment to policymakers, but also provide a supplement for the policy evaluation field.