Are Non-R&D Innovation Activities Actually Effective for Innovation Sustainability? Empirical Study from Chinese High-Tech Industry

Compared with developed countries, the paper explores whether non-R&D innovation activities in China actually are effective and provides a guidance on how we can choose a sustainable innovation mode for non-R&D, especially considering the “threshold effect” of the heterogeneity of different regional innovation levels. The dynamic threshold panel models of the non-R&D (NRD) effect on the basis of the threshold of regional innovation level is constructed to verify the complex “threshold effect” characteristics between non-R&D and innovation performance. The empirical results are discussed according to the panel data for 30 provinces in China concerning the high-tech industry. Results argue that the mechanism of non-R&D innovation activities on innovation performance have a significantly different “threshold effect.” Interestingly, when the threshold of regional innovation keeps a low level, the negative effect of non-R&D innovation activities is much larger. When the threshold level of regional innovation increases, reaching the critical mass, the negative impact of non-R&D innovation activities on innovation performance becomes smaller. However, once the regional innovation level crosses the critical mass, the negative impact of non-R&D shows a significantly increasing tendency. Specifically, neither much higher nor much lower regional innovation level is conducive to the promoting effect of non-R&D activities. The negative impact of non-R&D on performance will decrease to the minimum only in the regions within the moderate threshold level (critical mass). The dynamic nonlinear mechanism between non-R&D activities and innovation performance is empirically studied to assist high-tech enterprises for innovation sustainability based on heterogeneity of different regional innovation levels.