IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i23p15569-d981507.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How the “Absorption Processes” of Urban Innovation Contribute to Sustainable Development—A Fussy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis Based on Seventy-Two Cities in China

Author

Listed:
  • Fanbo Li

    (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao 999078, China)

  • Hongfeng Zhang

    (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao 999078, China)

Abstract

The goals and transformation of sustainable urban development require fundamental innovation; however, urban innovation is a cyclical process, the paradigm of innovation itself needs to be dramatically transformed, and all innovation key elements need to be coordinated with each other to achieve sustainable urban outputs. Based on this, this paper uses the absorptive capacity theory to construct a model of the relationships between the acquisition dimension, digestion dimension, conversion dimension, utilization dimension, and sustainable development in the innovation process of smart cities and uses the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (FSQCA) method to investigate the configuration mechanism in depth to show how the innovation process of these cities affects their sustainable development, taking the top 72 cities in China in terms of innovation capacity in 2020 as the research objects. The results of the study form three complex configuration paths that affect sustainable urban development, centered on the transformation of technological achievements, innovation management drive, and smart cities, and reveal that the economic and market foundations as the dimensions of urban innovation acquisition are not the core conditions for sustainable urban development. Based on this, this study develops a configuration classification for innovative cities that can achieve sustainable development, i.e., industrial paths, governance paths, and technology paths, and proposes strategic directions for sustainable urban innovation development.

Suggested Citation

  • Fanbo Li & Hongfeng Zhang, 2022. "How the “Absorption Processes” of Urban Innovation Contribute to Sustainable Development—A Fussy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis Based on Seventy-Two Cities in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-22, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:23:p:15569-:d:981507
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/23/15569/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/23/15569/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rennings, Klaus, 2000. "Redefining innovation -- eco-innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 319-332, February.
    2. Paul E. Bierly III & Paula S. Daly, 2007. "Alternative Knowledge Strategies, Competitive Environment, and Organizational Performance in Small Manufacturing Firms," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 31(4), pages 493-516, July.
    3. Appio, Francesco Paolo & Lima, Marcos & Paroutis, Sotirios, 2019. "Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation ecosystems, technological advancements, and societal challenges," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 1-14.
    4. Rob Krueger & David Gibbs, 2008. "'Third Wave' Sustainability? Smart Growth and Regional Development in the USA," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(9), pages 1263-1274.
    5. Buffart, Mickaël & Croidieu, Grégoire & Kim, Phillip H. & Bowman, Ray, 2020. "Even winners need to learn: How government entrepreneurship programs can support innovative ventures," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(10).
    6. Arimoto, Yutaka & Nakajima, Kentaro & Okazaki, Tetsuji, 2014. "Sources of productivity improvement in industrial clusters: The case of the prewar Japanese silk-reeling industry," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 27-41.
    7. Bronzini, Raffaello & Piselli, Paolo, 2016. "The impact of R&D subsidies on firm innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 442-457.
    8. Rene Kemp & Saeed Parto & Robert B. Gibson, 2005. "Governance for sustainable development: moving from theory to practice," International Journal of Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 8(1/2), pages 12-30.
    9. Anne Marie Knott, 2003. "Persistent heterogeneity and sustainable innovation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(8), pages 687-705, August.
    10. Chen, Chung-Jen, 2009. "Technology commercialization, incubator and venture capital, and new venture performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 93-103, January.
    11. Huergo, Elena & Trenado, Mayte & Ubierna, Andrés, 2016. "The impact of public support on firm propensity to engage in R&D: Spanish experience," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 113(PB), pages 206-219.
    12. Mickaël Buffart & Gregoire Croidieu & Phillip H. Kim & Ray Bowman, 2020. "Even winners need to learn : How government entrepreneurship programs can support innovative ventures," Post-Print hal-02927561, HAL.
    13. Pamela D. Morrison & John H. Roberts & Eric von Hippel, 2000. "Determinants of User Innovation and Innovation Sharing in a Local Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(12), pages 1513-1527, December.
    14. Huang, Mu-Hsuan & Chen, Dar-Zen, 2017. "How can academic innovation performance in university–industry collaboration be improved?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 210-215.
    15. Appio, Francesco Paolo & Lima, Marcos & Paroutis, Sotirios, 2019. "Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation ecosystems, technological advancements, and societal challenges," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 1-14.
    16. Huergo, Elena & Moreno, Lourdes, 2017. "Subsidies or loans? Evaluating the impact of R&D support programmes," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(7), pages 1198-1214.
    17. Hongfeng Zhang & Yumeng Zeng, 2022. "The Education for Sustainable Development, Online Technology and Teleological Rationality: A Game between Instrumental Value and Humanistic Value," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-16, February.
    18. Huergo, Elena & Moreno, Lourdes, 2014. "National or international public funding? Subsidies or loans? Evaluating the innovation impact of R&D support programmes," MPRA Paper 54218, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fanbo Li & Hongfeng Zhang & Di Zhang & Haoqun Yan, 2023. "Structural Diffusion Model and Urban Green Innovation Efficiency—A Hybrid Study Based on DEA-SBM, NCA, and fsQCA," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-29, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bettina Becker, 2020. "The Impact of Innovation Policy on Firm Innovation and Performance: A Review of Recent Research Developments," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 17(04), pages 10-15, January.
    2. Edina Berlinger & Anita Lovas & Péter Juhász, 2017. "State subsidy and moral hazard in corporate financing," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 25(4), pages 743-770, December.
    3. Barajas, Ascensión & Huergo, Elena & Moreno, Lourdes, 2017. "Public Support to Business R&D and the Economic Crisis: Spanish Evidence," MPRA Paper 81529, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Sancho-Bosch, Diego & Guerrero, Alex J. & Heijs, Joost, 2022. "Technology policy evaluation: The interaction between the financial constraint of firms and level of financial additionality," MPRA Paper 114659, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Zhang, Hongyan & Zhang, Lin, 2023. "Public support and energy innovation: Why do firms react differently?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    6. Huseyin Emre Sayici & Mehmet Fatih Ulu, 2023. "Economic Effects of R&D Supports," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 2308, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    7. Ali Cheshmehzangi & Andrew Flynn & May Tan-Mullins & Linjun Xie & Wu Deng & Eugenio Mangi & Weixuan Chen, 2021. "From Eco-Urbanism to Eco-Fusion: An Augmented Multi-Scalar Framework in Sustainable Urbanism," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-22, February.
    8. Liliana Gelabert & Martín Pereyra & Flavia Roldán, 2021. "Public support prevalence and innovation behavior. Uruguay 2007-2015," Documentos de Investigación 127, Universidad ORT Uruguay. Facultad de Administración y Ciencias Sociales.
    9. Yang Ding & Gang Chen, 2022. "How Do Innovation-Driven Policies Help Sports Firms Sustain Growth? The Mediating Role of R&D Investment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-21, November.
    10. Viktorie Klímová & Vladimír Žítek & Maria Králová, 2020. "How Public R&D Support Affects Research Activity of Enterprises: Evidence from the Czech Republic," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 11(3), pages 888-907, September.
    11. Thomas H. W. Ziesemer, 2021. "The Effects of R&D Subsidies and Publicly Performed R&D on Business R&D: A Survey," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 236(1), pages 171-205, March.
    12. Hyensup Shim & Kiyoon Shin, 2021. "Empirical Analysis of Evidence-Based Policymaking in R&D Programmes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, December.
    13. Kou, Mingting & Yang, Yuanqi & Chen, Kaihua, 2020. "The impact of external R&D financing on innovation process from a supply-demand perspective," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 375-387.
    14. Mulier, Klaas & Samarin, Ilia, 2021. "Sector heterogeneity and dynamic effects of innovation subsidies: Evidence from Horizon 2020," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(10).
    15. Perri, Cecilia & Giglio, Carlo & Corvello, Vincenzo, 2020. "Smart users for smart technologies: Investigating the intention to adopt smart energy consumption behaviors," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    16. Bianchini, Stefano & Llerena, Patrick & Martino, Roberto, 2019. "The impact of R&D subsidies under different institutional frameworks," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 65-78.
    17. Alexandre, Fernando & Chaves, Miguel & Portela, Miguel, 2022. "Investment Grants and Firms' Productivity: How Effective Is a Grant Booster Shot?," IZA Discussion Papers 15779, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Jennifer González-Blanco & Mercedes Vila-Alonso & Manuel Guisado-González, 2019. "Public Support Agencies for Innovation in Multilevel Governance Systems: Exploring the Existence of Signs of Complementarity and Substitution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-16, October.
    19. Aleksandar Giga & Alexandra Graddy-Reed & Andrea Belz & Richard J. Terrile & Fernando Zapatero, 2022. "Helping the Little Guy: the impact of government awards on small technology firms," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 846-871, June.
    20. Qinghua Xia & Qinwei Cao & Manqing Tan, 2020. "Basic research intensity and diversified performance: the moderating role of government support intensity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 577-605, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:23:p:15569-:d:981507. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.