Does Environmental Regulation Promote Environmental Innovation? An Empirical Study of Cities in China

Promoting environmental innovation through environmental regulation is a key measure for cities to reduce environmental pressure; however, the role of environmental regulation in environmental innovation is controversial. This study used the number of environmental patent applications to measure urban environmental innovation and analyzed the role of urban environmental regulation on urban environmental innovation with the help of the spatial Durbin model (SDM). The results showed that: (1) From 2007 to 2017, the number of environmental patent applications in China has grown rapidly, and technologies related to buildings dominated the development of China’s environmental innovation. (2) Although the number of cities participating in environmental innovation was increasing, China’s environmental innovation activities were highly concentrated in a few cities (Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai), showing significant spatial correlation and spatial agglomeration characteristics. (3) Urban environmental regulation had a positive U-shaped relationship with urban environmental innovation capability, which was consistent with what the Porter hypothesis advocates

Environmental Regulation and Green Technology Diffusion: A Case Study of Yangtze River Delta, China

As an important driver of green technology innovation, the impact of environmental regulation on the diffusion of green technology remains controversial. Taking China’s Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomeration, as an example, and using green patents transfer to measure green technology diffusion, this paper analyzes the effect of environmental regulation on green technology diffusion by revealing the temporal and spatial characteristics of green technology diffusion in the YRD. The results show that: (1) Green technology transfer activities in the YRD mainly take place in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou, and other cities. (2) Green building technology is the most demanded technology in the green technology transfer market in the YRD. (3) The direction of green technology diffusion in the YRD has changed significantly over time. In the early stage, green technologies mainly flowed to developed cities such as Shanghai, Suzhou, and Nanjing. However, in the later stage, green technologies mainly flowed from developed cities such as Shanghai, Suzhou, and Nanjing to cities with lower economic development levels (mostly located in Anhui Province). (4) The consistency of environmental regulation among cities plays an important role in promoting green technology transfer within the YRD, which is precisely what the YRD ecological green integrated development strategy emphasizes, breaking the administrative barriers between cities in the YRD and accelerating the flow of green technology between cities

Spatial inequality of bus transit dependence on urban streets and its relationships with socioeconomic intensities: A tale of two megacities in China

The dependence of urban bus transit on their covered streets is expected to be significant and heterogeneous in megacities. Using a bipartite network approach, we develop several weighted centrality-based connectivities to quantify the degree of dependencies of urban bus transit on streets. Two megacities with different road patterns, i.e., Beijing and Shanghai in China are taken as examples to depict comparatively spatial inequalities of the centrality-based dependencies at both local and global scales. Then, a series of spatial cross-section regression models are introduced to explore the colocation relationships between the dependencies of bus transit and urban socioeconomic intensities. The methodology of kernel density estimation (KDE) is used to convert all data with different scales into the same unit of measurement. Results indicate that there are significant statistical and spatial inequalities of the centrality-based dependencies of bus transit on urban streets. These inequalities with evident hierarchies, variances and clusters were validated by statistical analysis including power-law function, rank-size distribution, multiple variance indices, together with Global Moran\u27s I. Besides, a majority of bus transit rely heavily on minor streets concentrating on circumferential expressways in central urban areas and radial highways oriented to outer suburbs under industrial or residential suburbanization. The unequal distribution is found to be strongly related to population, nighttime light intensity, transport-related services, and commercial and leisure services by the spatial regression models. A good spatial matching between bus routes\u27 dependencies and socioeconomic activities intensities is found both in these two megacities

Spatio-temporal evolution of urban innovation structure based on zip code geodatabase: An empirical study from Shanghai and Beijing

In today's world, the innovation of science and technology has become the key support for improving comprehensive national strength and changing the mode of social production and lifestyle. The country that possesses world-class scientific and technological innovation cities maximizes the attraction of global innovation factors and wins a strategic initiative in international competition. Based on the urban zip code geodatabase, an evaluation system of urban innovation with the perspective of innovation outputs, and the spatial evolutionary mode, concerning the structure of innovation space of Shanghai and Beijing from 1991 to 2014, was developed. The results of the research indicated that the zip code geodatabase provided a new perspective for studying the evolving spatial structure of urban innovation. The resulting evaluation of the spatial structure of urban innovation using the urban zip code geodatabase established by connecting random edge points, was relatively effective. The study illustrates the value of this methodology. During the study period, the spatial structure of innovation of Shanghai and Beijing demonstrated many common features: with the increase in urban space units participating in innovation year by year, the overall gap of regional innovation outputs has narrowed, and the trend towards spatial agglomeration has strengthened. The evolving spatial structure of innovation of Shanghai and Beijing demonstrated differences between the common features during the 25 years as well: in the trend towards the suburbanization of innovation resources, the spatial structure of innovation of Shanghai evolved from a single-core to a multi-core structure. A radiation effect related to traffic arteries as spatial diffusion corridors was prominent. Accordingly, a spatial correlation effect of its innovation outputs also indicated a hollowness in the city center; the spatial structure of innovation of Beijing had a single-core oriented structure all the way. Together with the tendency for innovation resources to be agglomerated in the city center, the spatial correlation effect of innovation outputs reflected the characteristics of the evolutionary feature where "rural area encircles cities". The innovation spatial structure of Shanghai and Beijing have intrinsic consistency with the spatial structure of their respective regions (Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan region), which suggested that the principle of proportional and disproportional distribution of a city-scale pattern of technological and innovational activities is closely related to its regional innovation pattern.National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41471108, No.41501141peer-reviewed2017-11-1

Environmental Regulation and Green Technology Diffusion: A Case Study of Yangtze River Delta, China

As an important driver of green technology innovation, the impact of environmental regulation on the diffusion of green technology remains controversial. Taking China’s Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomeration, as an example, and using green patents transfer to measure green technology diffusion, this paper analyzes the effect of environmental regulation on green technology diffusion by revealing the temporal and spatial characteristics of green technology diffusion in the YRD. The results show that: (1) Green technology transfer activities in the YRD mainly take place in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou, and other cities. (2) Green building technology is the most demanded technology in the green technology transfer market in the YRD. (3) The direction of green technology diffusion in the YRD has changed significantly over time. In the early stage, green technologies mainly flowed to developed cities such as Shanghai, Suzhou, and Nanjing. However, in the later stage, green technologies mainly flowed from developed cities such as Shanghai, Suzhou, and Nanjing to cities with lower economic development levels (mostly located in Anhui Province). (4) The consistency of environmental regulation among cities plays an important role in promoting green technology transfer within the YRD, which is precisely what the YRD ecological green integrated development strategy emphasizes, breaking the administrative barriers between cities in the YRD and accelerating the flow of green technology between cities

The faster the better? Economic effects of the speed of inter‐city technology transfer in China

Although existing studies questioned the simple positive correlation between the technology transfer speed and the benefits, they have been widely condemned for lacking em-pirical evidence. Using the patent transfer data at the city scale in China, and distinguishing fast from slow by divid-ing technology transfer speed into four levels, this paper attempts to answer the question in terms of city economic growth, which is whether the faster is the better. Panel re-gression results show that for economic growth of city, the speed of technology transfer does not mean that faster is better. In other words, technology transfer maintaining a relatively rapid speed (more than 1 year and less than 2 years) can promote city economic growth, although the evidence is weak.2021-06-1

Coordinated Development of Innovation System in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt, a Demand and Supply Perspective

The Development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is not only a major regional coordination development strategy in China but also a core carrier supporting China’s innovation-driven development. Under this background, this paper explored the evolution, spatial difference, and coordination development of the regional innovation system in the period of 2007 to 2017 from the demand and supply perspective. We found that, during the study period, the development level of the innovation demand subsystem (IDS) and innovation supply subsystem (ISS), as well as their coordinated development, all showed an increasing trend. The development gap of IDS and the coordinated development among cities in YREB was quite balanced, while there existed a large gap among cities in YREB in the development of ISS. The development of IDS was better than the development of ISS in most of the cities of YREB, indicating that the innovation development of cities in YREB needs supply-side structural reform urgently. Most cities in YREB were at the moderately or slightly uncoordinated development phase, and Shanghai was the only city with coordinated development between IDS and ISS. This paper enriches the regional innovation system from a new perspective, the demand and supply perspective, as well as providing suggestions for the coordinated development of the regional innovation system in YREB

The faster the better? Economic effects of the speed of inter‐city technology transfer in China

Although existing studies questioned the simple positive correlation between the technology transfer speed and the benefits, they have been widely condemned for lacking em-pirical evidence. Using the patent transfer data at the city scale in China, and distinguishing fast from slow by divid-ing technology transfer speed into four levels, this paper attempts to answer the question in terms of city economic growth, which is whether the faster is the better. Panel re-gression results show that for economic growth of city, the speed of technology transfer does not mean that faster is better. In other words, technology transfer maintaining a relatively rapid speed (more than 1 year and less than 2 years) can promote city economic growth, although the evidence is weak.peer-reviewed2021-06-1

Regional Integration in the Inter-City Technology Transfer System of the Yangtze River Delta, China

Recently, the Chinese government decided to support the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in a national strategic way. On this background, this paper investigates the regional integration in the technology transfer system of the YRD based on patent transfer from three levels: overall, technology supply chain, and technology sales chain. It also uses the modularity maximization method to detect the community structure of the inter-city patent transfer network in China. The results show that regional integration of the technology transfer system of the YRD at both overall level and technology supply chain level had not been realized up to 2015, but had been achieved at the technical sales chain level. Technology flow in the YRD was increasingly moving across the border, and the intra-region technology transfer network was increasingly unable to meet the needs of technological development of the cities in the YRD. This paper has several limitations concerning the representativeness of patent data, the manifestation of patent data in technological transfer and international comparison

Involuntary processing of timbre : a mismatch negativity study

Timbre is a key and complex attribute of sound that might be pre-attentively coded in sensory memory, and the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related potential (ERP) might be adopted to detect this process. The present study investigated the timbre MMN in an oddball paradigm, with piano tone as standard, and sine wave or trumpet tone as deviant separately. Both deviants evoked a MMN component in a streaming of piano tones. Statistical analysis indicated that MMN for pure tone was significantly larger in magnitude than that for trumpet tone. The results evinced that the involuntary processing of timbre variations was relate to not to the spectral complexity but to the discrepancy between the standard and deviant tone.1952 page(s