The contrasting effects of interregional networks and local agglomeration on R&D productivity in Chinese provinces: Insights from an empirical spatial Durbin model

This paper examines the contrasting effects of local agglomeration in innovation activities and the interregional networks derived from innovation collaboration on R&D productivity. Based on a two-stage R&D process, study enriches the existing research and highlights the significance of interregional networks and agglomeration in understanding spillover effects and productivity improvement. This study employs the network slacks-based measure model to quantify the R&D productivity of two successive stages of research and technology transfer using panel data from 2009 to 2017 for 30 Chinese provinces. It employs the spatial Durbin model to explore and compare the effects of interregional networks and local agglomeration on R&D productivity at each stage. The findings show that interregional networks play an important role in improving research productivity, while local agglomeration is more important in technology transfer research. The significant spatial spillover effect of technology transfer productivity in adjacent provinces indicates a large likelihood of vergences in R&D productivity. The results confirm that interregional networks and local agglomeration operate at distinct parts of the R&D process. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.