Research on the Innovation Imbalance Between Coastal and Inland Port Cities Along the Belt and Road: Based on the Three Helix Theory

Port cities will be the important growth poles along the Belt and Road, including coastal and inland ports. But the innovation stimulus driven by the Belt and Road Initiative on the coastal and inland port cities is imbalance. This research takes two groups of Chinese port cities as empirical objects, one has coastal port and the other has inland port, and then establishes a system dynamics model based on the theory of triple helix to analyze port cities’ innovation features. The empirical case shows that the positive stimulation of Belt and Road Initiative to innovation activities of coastal port cities is better than that of inland cities in general. If the decision makers of inland cities want to achieve innovation output like that of developed coastal areas, they need to encourage local universities and research institutes to conduct more market-oriented research on one hand. On the other hand, they need to cooperate with multinational companies; meanwhile, they need to provide more technical resources for local start-ups. In addition, stimulating local house prices and living pressure in a reasonable range can stimulate the innovation enthusiasm of existing R&D personnel, attract top talents to join in, and then drive the innovation output of the whole region.