Evolutionary Characteristics and Influencing Factors of China’s Urban Technology Transfer Network

Innovative behavior is the reconfiguration and functional reconstruction of innovation resources and elements in specific time and space. As technological innovation becomes increasingly complex, innovation activities in individual cities are transitioning toward cross-city technology transfer, forming a city technology transfer network. Based on this, this paper uses 334 prefecture-level administrative units in China as the research object and employs patent transfer data from 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 to construct a directed and weighted technology transfer network matrix. First, this study explores the spatial structure and topological features of the network evolution. It then demonstrates the impact mechanism of multidimensional proximity factors on network evolution and finally conducts empirical testing using ArcGIS (version 10.8), Ucinet (version 6.x), and Stata (version 17). The results show the following: (1) In terms of spatial structure, the denser in the east and sparser in the west technology transfer pattern between cities is becoming more stable, and in the later stages, the overall situation is developing into a stronger and more densely clustered state. Cities such as Beijing play a prominent role as the core hubs, showing a capital gravitational effect. The polarization and clustering characteristics of the network continue to be significant. (2) In terms of topological structure, the scale and density of the city technology transfer network have significantly increased; the boundaries of the core–periphery structure have weakened, and the number of cities in the core layer continues to rise; the degree of modularity in the community structure first increased and then decreased. (3) In terms of driving factors, geographical proximity, institutional proximity, and informational proximity all positively stimulate the evolution of China’s city technology transfer network. Industrial proximity has a positive driving effect in the early stages of evolution, but excessive industrial proximity in the later stages negatively impacts evolution.