Tailoring urban innovation: Configuring local efforts in China's new energy vehicles innovation

Local Chinese governments are increasingly prioritizing the development of the new energy vehicle (NEV) industry as a strategic initiative to pursue a low-carbon future. However, the effective combinations of policy efforts and regional factors that shape superior local NEV innovation remain unclear. This study proposes a comprehensive framework that integrates policy instruments and region-specific factors to examine their configurational effects using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Data analysis spanning 85 NEV pilot cities of China revealed three paths to high urban NEV innovation: one combining policy instruments and region-specific factors and two primarily driven by policy instruments. Further analysis revealed that large NEV pilot cities, with supportive institutional environments and high innovation capabilities, benefit significantly from expectation-setting instruments during their initial development stage. In contrast, smaller high-performing cities rely more on market-creation instruments during the rapid development phase. Additionally, cities within the same cluster, particularly large and capital cities, prefer similar policy instrument configurations. These findings not only illuminate strategies for local governments in designing context-specific policy instrument mixes but also suggest that the identified pathways can be adapted to other regions with comparable urban characteristics. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd.