Multi-Level Innovation Ecosystem Analysis of China’s Ice and Snow Equipment Manufacturing: From Firm to Regional to Industrial Perspectives Using fsQCA

This study aims to identify the multi-level configurational pathways through which firm, regional and industrial conditions jointly shape firm innovation performance within China’s ice and snow equipment manufacturing ecosystem. Complex causal interplay among firm capabilities, regional environments and industrial structures shapes innovation ecosystems in emerging manufacturing sectors, yet variance-based methods that assume symmetric and additive effects while overlooking configurational equifinality continue to dominate the existing literature. The unit of analysis is the individual firm embedded within its regional and industrial context, and the outcome captures firm-level innovation performance as shaped by ecosystem participation. A multi-level configurational framework incorporating firm-level conditions (R&D investment intensity and digital transformation capability), regional-level conditions (policy support intensity and market demand scale) and industrial-level conditions (supply chain completeness and collaborative innovation network density) is built. By combining fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with necessary condition analysis (NCA), the configurations associated with high firm innovation performance within the ecosystem are identified. This study represents the first application of the combined NCA and fsQCA approach to the ice and snow equipment sector, explicitly operationalizing a two-tier causal logic in which necessary bottleneck conditions constrain the outcome space before sufficient configurations are mapped within that space. Survey and archival data from 86 ice and snow equipment manufacturers across seven provincial-level regions are calibrated and studied. From the NCA results, digital transformation capability and supply chain completeness emerge as individually necessary conditions. The sufficiency analysis uncovers four equifinal configurations leading to high performance. Three distinct configurations linked to the absence of high performance are also obtained from the negation analysis, and causal asymmetry is confirmed. An exploratory cross-level comparison suggests that conditions from all three analytical levels appear as core elements across the four configurations with near-comparable frequency, and the dominant level shifts from one configuration to another rather than being universally fixed. When alternative calibration anchors, frequency thresholds and an enhanced standard analysis are considered, the stability of the solutions is confirmed for three of the four configurations; the fourth (digitally anchored collaboration) is sensitive to the frequency threshold, consistent with its smaller empirical base. These findings enrich innovation ecosystem theory by showing that multi-level conditions interact through complementary and potentially substitutive mechanisms rather than independently, and they give actionable guidance for policymakers and managers who seek to build resilient innovation ecosystems in China’s winter sports equipment sector.