Abstract
The National High-tech Zone is an important driving force for the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure and it is also an important guarantee for the realization of an innovation-driven China. Thirteen indexes are selected from three aspects of innovation investment, innovation performance and innovation support to construct a comprehensive evaluation index system of innovation capability of national high-tech zones in the northern coastal comprehensive economic zone. On this basis, the entropy weight-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model is used to evaluate the innovation and development capability of 19 national high-tech zones from 2015 to 2017 comprehensively. The results show that the comprehensive index of innovation capability of national high-tech zones shows an upward trend, but the overall innovation capability is relatively low; The contribution of each subsystem to innovation capability is different, the innovation environment is the largest, the innovation performance is the second, and the innovation investment is the smallest; According to the level of innovation ability, 19 high-tech zones are divided into star type, moderate type and backward type, with moderate type high-tech zones accounting for the largest proportion.
Keywords
Introduction
In May 1988, China established the first national high-tech industrial development zone (hereinafter referred to as the National High-tech Zone), aiming at developing Chinese high-tech industry, adjusting the industrial structure, promoting the transformation of traditional industries and enhancing international competitiveness. It has been more than 30 years since its development. It has made outstanding contributions in promoting the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure, scientific and technological innovation, pooling talents and transformation of achievements. It has made great contributions to the development of local economy and has played a good leading and exemplary role in Chinese socialist modernization. In the contemporary era, the national high-tech zone has been given a new responsibility: the important mission from factor-driven to innovation-driven. The Northern Coastal Comprehensive Economic Zone, relying on Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei and Shandong Peninsula, is a town group with world influence in China. “Beijing Tianjin Hebei” is moving towards “Beijing Tianjin Hebei Shandong”, and the integration process is accelerating. By 2019, there are 20 national high-tech zones in the northern coastal comprehensive economic zone, namely Beijing Zhongguancun, Tianjin Binhai, Shijiazhuang, Tangshan, Baoding, Chengde, Yanjiao, Jinan, Qingdao, Zibo, Yellow River Delta, Zaozhuang, Yantai, Weifang, Jining, Tai’an, Weihai, Laiwu, Linyi and Dezhou High-tech Zones. Scientific evaluation of the innovation capability of the national high-tech zone in the northern coastal comprehensive economic zone has important reference and guiding significance for promoting the construction of the national high-tech zone, regional economic development and the implementation of the innovation-driven strategy.
Literature review
There are abundant research results on the evaluation of scientific and technological innovation capability of high-tech zones at home and abroad. Albert [1] thinks that the innovation ability of American science and technology parks is influenced by the interaction of government and market; Ou et al. [3] divided the cluster system innovation capability of high-tech zones into endogenous function and explicit capability, and found that most high-tech zones have low system function and output capability, and the mismatch between function and capability is serious, and there is a big gap between different high-tech zones in function and capability; Krishnan [7] studied the innovation system of Silicon Valley Science and Technology Park in the United States; Urriago et al. [2] studied 22 parks in Spain and believed that the enterprises in the parks have strong innovation ability; Based on the perspective of supply-side structural reform, Lei and Tuo [5] used entropy weight method and TOPSIS to calculate and evaluate the innovation and development capability of Shanxi Agricultural Science and Technology Park; Chang and Luo [4] used K-means clustering analysis and ordered Logit model to deeply discuss the scientific and technological innovation capability and influencing factors of national agricultural science and technology parks; Li [8] used DEA method to measure the efficiency of Chinese high-tech innovation, and used GINI and GEM to measure and analyze the gap of technological innovation in national high-tech zones among regions; Huo et al. [6] divided the park into innovation leading, innovation demonstration and innovation stable areas, and analyzed the key constraints of different types of parks by using obstacle degree model; Kou and Sun [13] used DEA model to analyze the innovation capability of science and technology parks in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions; Liu and Chen [18] used data envelopment analysis to evaluate the innovation efficiency of Chinese science and technology parks based on time delay effect; Based on the applied ecosystem, Chen and Liu [12] constructed an innovation ecological evaluation index system of science and technology parks in three dimensions of state, flow and potential, and evaluated 53 national science and technology parks.
To sum up, it can be found that the existing literature research pays more attention to the horizontal comparison of high-tech zones, but it lacks the overall vertical comparison; There are few studies on regional national high-tech zones; There are also deficiencies in the main evaluation methods adopted by academia, such as data envelopment analysis and principal component analysis. This paper tries to make a breakthrough in this respect. Based on the establishment of comprehensive evaluation indicators, this paper selects the data of Chinese northern coastal comprehensive economic zones from 2015 to 2017, and uses entropy weight fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to comprehensively evaluate the innovation capability of 19 national high-tech zones, which has reference significance for further improving the innovation level of national high-tech zones.
Index selection and model construction
Construction of index system
As a gathering place of high-tech industries, the National High-tech Zone has gone through the stages of start-up, second start-up, innovation-driven strategy promotion and high-quality development, and has gradually become the level of national patent output. Its innovation capability is self-evident. The following principles are mainly followed when constructing the index system of scientific and technological innovation capability of national high-tech zones: Scientific, indicators should be able to objectively reflect the innovation ability of high-tech zones, and the calculation process should be scientifi; Data availability, considering data sources and completeness, no statistics or data collection indicators are not highly desirable; Integrity, inorder to study the innovation capability of the national high-tech zone, the indicators cannot be omitted, which can reflect the innovation and development of the high-tech zone to the greatest extent. On the basis of fully considering the above principles, drawing lessons from the previous evaluation index system for the innovation capability of high-tech zones [17], this paper designs an evaluation system from three aspects of innovation investment, innovation performance and innovation supporting environment. By selecting 13 representative indexes, this paper constructs an evaluation index system for the innovation capability of national high-tech zones in the northern coastal comprehensive economic zone. Specific indicators are shown in Table 1.
Evaluation index system of innovation and development capacity of national high-tech zone in northern coastal comprehensive economic zone
Evaluation index system of innovation and development capacity of national high-tech zone in northern coastal comprehensive economic zone
— Data Source
The data used in this paper are mainly from “China Torch Statistical Yearbook” and “China City Statistical Yearbook”. The Yellow River Delta is an agricultural high-tech zone, so the high-tech zone in the Yellow River Delta was excluded in the study. There are many national parks in China. Although only 19 parks are selected in this paper, each park has its own characteristics. For example, Zhongguancun Park is the first National Park in China. Tianjin Binhai park has a vast radiation space of “Three North”. It is located in the center of Northeast Asia and the closest starting point of the Eurasian land bridge Hebei Industrial Park is radiated by Beijing and Tianjin, carrying relevant supporting industries in surrounding areas. Shandong is divided into three areas, Jinan area focuses on the development of logistics and science and technology, Qingdao area focuses on marine economy and international trade, Yantai area focuses on functional manufacturing, national scientific and technological achievements and international technology transfer, with strong typicality.
— Weight determination
Common evaluation methods of innovation capability in high-tech zones mainly include entropy weight, TOPSIS, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, analytic hierarchy process and other methods. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. Among them, entropy weight method is an objective assignment method. Based on the tool of information entropy, the weight of each index is calculated. The smaller the information entropy of the index, the greater the amount of information provided and the higher the weight [15, 16]. Based on membership theory, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method uses fuzzy mathematics method to make an overall evaluation of transactions or objects restricted by various factors [9, 14]. Entropy weight can make better use of the advantages of information entropy to divide the weight of each index, overcome the shortcomings of traditional analytic hierarchy process and principal component analysis, and has strong objectivity. In addition, it uses the membership theory function of fuzzy mathematics to evaluate the whole thing.
The combination of entropy weight and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method can reflect the innovation capability of national high-tech zones more truly.
Entropy is used to measure the effective information in all data. Entropy weight method objectively determines the weight according to the variability of data indexes. For example, the smaller the information entropy of an index, the greater the variation degree of the index, the greater the role it plays in evaluation, and the greater the weight, and vice versa. The calculation process is as follows:
*Data Standardization Processing
Because the dimensions of each index data are different, this paper uses range method to standardize the original data. For different indexes, standardization treatment formulas are different, and different formulas can be adopted for positive indexes and negative indexes.
In formula (1) and (2), r
ij
is the raw data for indicator j in region i,
*The information entropy value Hj of the evaluation index in item j is calculated as follows:
In formula (3): f ij is the proportion of index j in year i.
*Calculate entropy weight. The formula for calculating the entropy weight of the i-th index ω
i
is as follows:
— Model Building
*Calculation of Judgment Matrix R
This paper divides the evaluation grade types of innovation and development of national high-tech zones in Chinese northern coastal comprehensive economic zone into three levels: V = {Level 1, Level 2, Level 3}, After the index is dimensionless, Xmax and Xmin is the maximum and minimum value of the research data. According to the maximum value and the minimum value, the classification point is calculated.
The grading point of level I is
*Calculate comprehensive evaluation index
According to the calculated weight vector and the judgment matrix, the calculation formula of evaluating China’s Northern Coastal Integrated Economic Zone is obtained as follows:
In formula (7), B is the membership vector of the evaluation results of the innovation ability of national high-tech zones, ω is weight of index, R is the fuzzy relationship matrix.
Weights of indexes for innovation ability
Calculate the weights of all the evaluation indexes. The size of the index weight reflects directly the contribution of each variable index to the development of the innovation ability of high-tech zones. The results are shown in Table 2.
Weights of the indexes for innovation ability
Weights of the indexes for innovation ability
It could be seen from Table 2 that the weight of innovation support is the largest, reaching 43.77%, the weight of innovation performance is 29.36% and the weight of innovation input is 26.87%. In level-II indexes, GDP growth rate, per capita GDP and internet users rank top three. For a long time, region economic development has attracted plenty of high-tech talents for innovation development and it has gained more and more policy supports. Investment in science and education is becoming larger and larger in financial expenditure. In the era of information, Internet not only has changed the ways of people obtaining information, but also changed their ways of thinking. The new state of “Internet +” brought by Internet technology has promoted greatly transformation and upgrading of industrial structure [10, 19]; especially in regions with developed tertiary industry, the effects are much better and more remarkable.
Based on the data of northern coastal integrated economic zones of 2015 to 2017, entropy weight-based fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model is established to evaluate the innovation abilities of 19 national high-tech zones. The results are shown in Table 3.
Evaluation results of innovation ability of national high-tech zones in northern coastal integrated economic regions
Evaluation results of innovation ability of national high-tech zones in northern coastal integrated economic regions
Generally, the mean value of comprehensive evaluation of the innovation ability of high-tech zones in 2015 is 0.2642, in 2016 it is 0.2794 and in 2017 it is 0.2835, indicating that the innovation ability of high-tech zones is promoted gradually. The purpose of this paper is not only to measure the innovation ability of the park, but also to find the gap between the parks in different regions. The park is a benchmark for the development of high-tech industry, while the park with strong innovation ability is also a benchmark for other parks. Therefore, it is necessary to study Beijing area.
Zhongguancun high-tech zone scored the highest in each year, which were 0.5429 in 2015, 0.5711 in 2016 and 0.5740 in 2017, respectively, indicating the innovation abilities of high-tech zones are generally low. Zhongguancun had the highest mean value of innovation ability in northern coastal integrated economic zones, whose fuzzy comprehensive index of innovation ability reached 0.5627; Tianjin ranked the second and its fuzzy comprehensive index of innovation ability reached 0.3601, far ahead of other high-tech zones. This is mainly because Zhongguancun is a region with dense human and financial resources in China, where high-tech industries are concentrated, and the central and local governments give more subsidies to the park to actively promote scientific and technological innovation, institutional innovation, mechanism innovation, system innovation and organizational innovation. Relying on national projects, governmental funds and social capital, Tianjin Binhai High-tech Zone has greater advantages in collaboration mechanism innovation and resource integration.
According to the mean value M and the standard deviation SD, 19 high-tech zones are divided into three regions: star (M + 0.5SD), mediocre (M-0.5SD— M+0.5SD) and backward (M-0.5SD). The scores of star high-tech zones is higher than 0.143, including Zhongguancun, Binhai and Jinan. Their scores in comprehensive level of innovation ability are 0.5627, 0.3601 and 0.3293, respectively, covering 15.79% of the research samples. These high-tech zones have better comprehensive innovation ability. They pay attention to investment in innovation and have achieved excellent performances. Supported by local government, they have achieved excellent comprehensive performances are. Second, Zhongguancun in Beijing is a super-star high-tech zone, with the most shining performances. Not only its comprehensive innovation ability leaves the mediocre and backward high-tech zones far behind, but also it is far higher than Tianjin and Jinan which are also star high-tech zones. The scores of comprehensive innovation ability of mediocre high-tech zones range within 0.2371–0.3143, including Qingdao, Weihai, Zibo, Yantai, Shijianzhuang, Weifang, Yanjiao, Linji, Jining and Tangshan, which are scored respectively 0.3105, 0.2759, 0.2723, 0.2694, 0.2673, 0.2576, 0.2481, 0.2466, 0.2462 and 0.2407, covering 52.63% of the research samples. These high-tech zones lay emphasis on innovative development in the process of innovation to some degrees; however, limited by the innovation environment and the resource input, their scores in comprehensive level rank at the second level. the scores of comprehensive innovation ability of backward high-tech zones are lower than 0.2371, including Dezhou, Tai’an, Laiwu, Baoding, Zaozhuang and Chengde, which are respectively 0.2334, 0.2326, 0.2297, 0.2197, 0.2183 and 0.2180, covering 31.58% of the research samples. These high-tech zones are not established long and there are not sufficient innovation resources, therefore, they have large room for improvement.
For a long time, the national high-tech zones have dedicated to solving resource integration and industrial structure upgrade in China. As the comprehensive functional areas undertaking national strategic tasks of significant development and reform and opening-up, high-tech zones are the pilot projects of reform and innovation mechanism and have the rights of independent development and self-innovation. This study establishes a comprehensive system to evaluate the innovation abilities of national high-tech zones in the northern coastal comprehensive economic zone of China, based on which the comprehensive index of innovation ability of national high-tech zones was calculated using entropy-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method based on the statistical data from 2015 to 2017. The results show that from 2015 to 2017, comprehensive index of the innovation ability of national high-tech zones in Northern coastal integrated economic zones show upward trend, the innovation abilities of the national high-tech zones are generally low, with the average score of only 0.2757, and there are great differences between the high-tech zones. In terms of the weight of each subsystem, the role of innovation environment in innovation ability is greater than the performance of innovation, and innovation input contributes the least. Among various indicators, the scale, speed and informatization of regional economic development are the most important factors. According to the scores of comprehensive levels of innovation ability, 19 high-tech zones are divided into star, mediocre and backward high-tech zones, which include respectively 3, 10 and 6 high-tech zones and account for 15.79%, 52.63% and 31.58% of the research samples, in which the mediocre high-tech zones cover the largest proportion.
Based on the above research conclusions, to promote actively comprehensive development of the innovation ability of northern coastal integrated economic zones in China, the following suggestions are put forward.
First, understand fully the concept of innovation and construct a modern country transforming from resource dependent to innovation driving. At present, the comprehensive innovation abilities of northern coastal integrated economic zones are generally low, with the average value of only 0.2757, and the backward high-tech zones cover as high as 31.58% of the research samples. So, to accelerate the innovation ability of national high-tech zones, it is necessary to stick to the philosophy of innovative development and promote gradually innovation-driving state building.
Second, improve comprehensively the ability of constructing national high-tech zones, formulate all-around policies of innovation and development and boost comprehensive improvement of each subsystem of innovation development. The level of innovation development of high-tech zones consists of 3 subsystems and 13 measurement indexes. For all the high-tech zones in the northern coastal integrated economic zones, the focus of innovation development should be laid on where there are poorer innovation performance for improvement so as to promote coordinating development of the innovation abilities.
Third, reduce the gaps between the high-tech zones. Performances of different subsystems of the high-tech zones differ greatly and there are few star high-tech zones. Zhongguancun high-tech zone in Beijing has obvious advantages, while about one third high-tech zones are backward, which is unfavorable for healthy development of northern coastal economic zones. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce regional integrated development policies to promote actively resource allocation and results communications of high-tech zones and to strengthen the demonstrating and radiating capacities of high-tech zones with higher comprehensive innovation abilities so as to achieve innovation development of high-tech zones.
