Collaborative innovation in the UAV industrial chain: a two-layer network evolutionary game model

Promoting collaborative innovation between UAV manufacturers and service providers offers a key pathway to overcoming the current bottlenecks in the industrial chain. This study models the strategic interactions and dynamic evolutionary mechanisms of collaborative innovation between UAV manufacturers and service providers under bounded rationality. To do so, it constructs a two-layer network evolutionary game model that incorporates key practical factors, such as collaborative innovation costs, policy incentives, enterprises’ technological accumulation levels, knowledge absorption and transformation capabilities, and cooperation trust. Numerical simulations are then performed to examine how these factors shape collaborative innovation behavior across the industrial chain. The findings indicate that jointly reducing collaboration costs, strengthening policy incentives, enhancing enterprises’ technological and absorptive capacities, and fostering cooperation trust can significantly accelerate the evolution of the collaborative innovation network. Based on these insights, the study offers targeted recommendations for both government policy design and industrial practice, aiming to support collaborative innovation in the UAV industrial chain and contribute to the high-quality development of the low-altitude economy.