Study on the Evaluation of Green Technology Innovation Efficiency and Its Influencing Factors in the Central Plains City Cluster of China

Abstract

Green technology innovation, containing economic, social and ecological triple value effects, plays an important role in promoting regional high-quality development. In this paper, we take the Central Plains city cluster, one of China’s top ten national city clusters, as the research object and use the super-efficiency SBM-DEA model to measure and analyze its green technology innovation efficiency. The panel spatial Durbin model (SDM) is used to empirically investigate the market-based, policy and social factors that affect green technology innovation efficiency in the Central Plains city cluster. The main findings are as follows: (1) The green technology innovation efficiency in the Central Plains city cluster shows a fluctuating upward trend from 2009 to 2019, and the spatial differences are obvious, but this spatial difference has converged somewhat over time; (2) Economic development and industrial structure upgrading are the dominant market forces driving green technology innovation efficiency in the Central Plains city cluster, while opening up and enterprise performance hurt the efficiency of green technology innovation; (3) By strengthening environmental regulation and fiscal expenditures on science and technology, the government plays a guiding role in promoting green technology efficiency; (4) Human capital can provide talent support for green technology innovation to effectively promote the efficiency of green technology innovation in the Central Plains city cluster, while the impact of urbanization on green technology innovation efficiency is not significant; (5) In addition to urbanization, the market-based, policy, and social factors that affect green technology innovation efficiency in the Central Plains city cluster also present significant spatial spillover effects. To further promote green technology innovation efficiency in the Central Plains city cluster in the future, we should significantly promote the green transformation and upgrading of industrial structure, improve the quality of opening up to the outside world, strengthen environmental supervision and optimize its governance model, increase government support for green innovation, improve the talent cultivation and introduction system, and mobilize enterprises’ enthusiasm for green technology innovation.