Research on the Influence of Digital Economy on Technological Innovation: Evidence from Manufacturing Enterprises in China

Abstract

Digital economy is a key breakthrough in the new round of the industrial revolution, and technological innovation is the key to economic growth and wealth creation by enterprises. The influence of the digital economy on the innovation of manufacturing enterprises is directly related to solving the problem of inadequate development. Therefore, it is of great theoretical value and practical significance to study the influence of the digital economy on enterprise technological innovation. Taking Chinese manufacturing companies during 2016–2020 as a sample, this paper measured the technological innovation level of enterprises by the quantity and quality of innovation output of manufacturing enterprises and measured the development degree of the digital economy by the four dimensions of digital economy infrastructure, digital industrialization, industrial digitalization, and digital governance. The influence of the digital economy on enterprise technological innovation was researched through the Moran index and panel regression model. Moran’s indexes were all greater than 0, and the data were concentrated in the first and third quadrants of the scatter chart, and the value dropped from 0.186 to 0.152, indicating that provincial digital economic development presents a phenomenon of aggregation in spatial distribution, which gradually decreases along the eastern coast to the western region and gradually moves from aggregation to dispersion. The regression coefficients are significant at least at the level of 10%, indicating that the digital economy can effectively promote the output quantity and quality of technological innovation in manufacturing enterprises. The digital economy has a double-promotion effect on technological innovation. In promoting the technological innovation of manufacturing enterprises, infrastructure, digital industrialization, and industrial digitization play a dual and positive role as well as digital governance. In addition, the digital economy and its four dimensions have a first-order and second-order time-lag effect, which has a double-promotion effect on enterprises’ technological innovation. In general, the digital economy can promote enterprise technological innovation.