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Keywords

standards; low-carbon technology; patent cooperation network; cooperative innovation; technology diffusion

Abstract

As the technical basis and knowledge sharing mechanism of economic and social activities, standards play a fundamental and strategic role in promoting the progress of low-carbon technology. The characteristics of high complexity, high input intensity and high risk level of low-carbon technology, as well as the imbalance of innovation resources, all make cooperative innovation become an important way to promote the development of low-carbon technology. At present, there are few studies on the role of standards that as a institutional factor on the mechanism of low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation. This paper aims to explore the impact of standards on the low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation. Through mechanism analysis, standards can promote technology diffusion through knowledge spillover, technical specifications and network effect, and can also produce technology path dependence, high conversion cost, technology monopoly and other phenomena that lead to technology locking, and then have an impact on the low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation. Therefore, this paper takes 30 provinces in China from 2003 to 2020 as the research object to test the impact of the standards on the low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation. The findings are as follows: China’ s low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation network has a relatively significant star structure, and with the continuous development of low-carbon technology, the inter-regional cooperative innovation network is getting closer and closer, and the scale of cooperation is gradually expanding. Standards significantly promoted the low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation in China, considering the possible problems of endogenous and control variables missing, we tested the robustness of the benchmark regression results using the lag one phase of the explanatory variables and nearest neighbor matching method, the results show that standards still have a significant positive effect on low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation in China. In addition, the effect of standards in promoting low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation shows the characteristics of regional heterogeneity. Compared with inland areas, coastal areas have more obvious effects. This is because the coastal areas have more advantages in technological innovation in industry, resources and talents. Furthermore, we have also noted that different types of standards have different effects on the low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation. Compared with national standards, industry standards are more conducive to low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation. This may be because industry standards are more professional as a supplement to national standards. Further research found that economies of scale have a positive role in moderating the relationship between standards and lowcarbon technology regional cooperative innovation. The expansion of enterprise scale promotes the technology diffusion, thus accelerating the flow of technical knowledge and information, and increases the role of standards in promoting low-carbon technology regional cooperative innovation. The research in this paper enriches the research of standards and regional cooperative innovation, expands the research boundary of low-carbon technology innovation, and provides more theoretical basis for the application of standardized governance means of low-carbon development and the implementation of ‘project to standardize carbon peaking and carbon neutrality’.

DOI

10.16315/j.stm.2024.02.007

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