政府研发资助如何影响中小企业创新绩效

The influence mechanism between government R&D funding and innovation performance of SMEs

基于政府干预理论和高阶梯队理论,构建了“政府研发资助—高管创新态度—企业创新行为—企业创新绩效”的链式中介模型,以深入理解政府研发资助影响企业创新绩效的具体过程。基于546家科技型中小企业的问卷调查数据,运用路径分析和Bootstrap等方法进行实证检验,结果表明:创新基金、加计扣除、创新券三类资助方式对企业创新绩效均具有显著正向影响;高管创新态度、企业创新行为在政府研发资助与企业创新绩效关系间具有链式中介作用。进一步组合效应分析显示,加计扣除与创新券的组合使用效果为正协同,而创新基金与加计扣除、创新券之间并未形成协同作用。研究结论揭开了政府研发资助影响企业创新绩效的过程黑箱,为后续政策的制定和实施提供了有益启示。

As the main force of technological innovation,small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs)play an important role in a country’s economic development and technological progress.Governments around the world have attached great importance to the key role of SMEs’independent innovation in winning national competitive advantage.In order to solve the problems of market failure and system failure in SMEs’innovation effectively,governments actively use various policy instruments to support SMEs’innovation,such as Innovation Fund subsidy,Additional Deduction policy,and Innovation Voucher subsidy,etc.In this context,the impact of these types of government R&D funding on SMEs’innovation has become an important topic in the field of innovation policy research.Existing research is more about the effectiveness of different R&D funding instruments,but lack of in-depth discussion on its mechanism.As a result,it is hard to form academic support for the improvement of the policy.Given the lack of previous studies,this paper takes the influence mechanism of government R&D funding on SMEs’innovation as main research object,hoping to provide theoretical basis and empirical support for the design,implementation and improvement of relevant policies.Based on the Government Intervention Theory and Upper Echelons Theory,this paper constructs a serial mediation model of"Government R&D funding-TMT innovation attitude-firm innovation behavior-firm innovation performance",to investigate whether the government R&D funding has led to the change of Top Management Team(TMT)innovation attitude and the difference of firm innovation behavior,so as to deeply understand the specific process of government R&D funding affecting firm innovation performance.Then,this paper deduces 4 main hypotheses and 12 sub-hypotheses through theoretical analysis and literature review.Thirdly,this paper carries out scientific research design and large sample survey.Based on the questionnaire survey data of 546 small and medium-sized technology-based enterprises,using path analysis and bootstrap method to conduct empirical test,and concludes the following conclusions:(1)Innovation Fund subsidy,Additional Deduction policy,and Innovation Voucher subsidy all have a significant positive impact on firm innovation performance.(2)TMT innovation attitude and firm innovation behavior play a chain intermediary role in the positive relationship between government R&D funding and firm innovation performance.Specifically,the experiential learning and inter-organizational learning induced by the government R&D funding can promote the firm innovation investment by actively changing the innovation attitude of TMT,and ultimately improve the firm innovation performance.(3)Additional Deduction policy and Innovation Voucher subsidy have a positive interaction effect on promoting the firm innovation performance,while the combination of Innovation Fund subsidy,Additional Deduction policy,and Innovation Voucher subsidy will weaken the innovation incentive on firms.By introducing TMT innovation attitude and firm innovation behavior as chain intermediary variables,this paper opens the process black box of government R&D funding affecting firm innovation performance,which provides a new perspective for the evaluation of R&D funding policy.Meanwhile,it investigates policy combination effects of different R&D funding instruments.For the above conclusions,this paper summarizes the following policy implications:Firstly,policymakers should pay more attention to the learning effect and behavioral additional effect of policy instruments.Secondly,we should make rational use of the policy mix to give full play to the synergy and complementarity of different R&D funding instruments.