Abstract
With the transition in the regional development discourse to knowledge- and innovation-based economics, the cultivation of innovation capacity has gained importance as an initiative to enhance regional sustainability and has emerged as a policy goal. An understanding of the formation of innovation clusters is critical to the cultivation of regional innovation capabilities. Except for the location and regional development conditions’ factors, researchers emphasize a built environment’s role in the formation of innovation clusters. Based on the spatial database of 12,516 high-tech firms in 2017 in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), this study developed a conceptual framework for the built environment. The framework comprises living, service, perceptual, industrial, and physical aspects. The direction and intensity of the correlation between built environment factors and high-tech firms are discussed using the spatial regression model and geographical detector (GD) technique. The results show a highly concentrated spatial distribution pattern of high-tech firms in the PRD. A significant county-level spatial autocorrelation is revealed through Moran’s I. According to the model, we determine the positive impacts of technology support, transport infrastructure, and living service levels on the agglomeration of high-tech firms as well as the negative impact of the public service level. The GD’s result demonstrates different levels of impact intensity of built environmental factors. We argue that a comprehensive understanding of the influence of built environment factors on innovation agglomeration will help policymakers develop targeted policies to foster local innovation capabilities and promote sustainable regional development.
Highlights
The “Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” which proposed 17 sustainable development goals (SDG), was released at the 2015 United Nations Development Summit [1]
Based on the understanding of location choice of high-tech firms, which is derived from the institutionalism and neoclassical perspectives, and combining it with a focus on the built environment from the innovation perspective, this study proposed a multidimensional model as a framework to conceptualize the built environment more systematically (Figure 3)
We examined the relationship between built environment and high-tech firms using spatial regression and the geographical detector (GD) technique
Summary
The “Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” which proposed 17 sustainable development goals (SDG), was released at the 2015 United Nations Development Summit [1]. It was proposed to strengthen scientific research and enhance technological capabilities in all countries, especially developing countries, and, in turn, achieve industrial diversification and increase the added value of goods [2]. Improving regional innovation capability has been considered an important means of enhancing regional economic competitiveness [7,8,9,10]. In this context, the study considers the case of the Pearl River Delta (PRD). Identifying new development models is critical to the sustainable growth of the PRD In this regard, “innovation” is one of the main development discourses. For the PRD, this value was 2.94% in 2017
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