For Future Investment, Empirical Study on Enterprise Participation in Basic Research in the Process of Digital Transformation

• Published in: SAGE open 2023-04, Vol.13 (2)
• Main Authors: Xiao, Fengjun, Wang, Jiaxin, Li, Jie, Wang, Hongwu, Zhu, Weihua, Chen, Hekun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Digital economy; Industrial development; R&D; Research & development; Technological change
• ISSN: 2158-2440; 2158-2440
• DOI: 10.1177/21582440231172902

Basic research is the driver of advanced productivity and is an important guarantee for the market competitiveness of enterprise. In order to understand the influence of basic research on the development of China’s digital economy industry, this paper, based on structural equation model by collecting data from 209 enterprises in digital economy industry, explores the relationship between enterprise participation in basic research and four factors: enterprise efficiency, perceived risk, priority, and technological innovation, together with function mechanism. The results show that, first enterprises can improve efficiency, reduce potential risk concerns, and enhance technology level by expanding business revenue, enlarging scale, and upgrading R&D institutions, thus promoting participation in basic research. At the same time, the government can provide more subsidies for enterprise R&D funds to reduce enterprise concern about the risk of basic research, and guide them to expand their investment in R&D and focus on basic research so as to expand their participation in this field. Secondly, the optimization of enterprise participation in basic research, the upgrading of R&D institutions and the number of invention patents have mutually-reinforced effect, while the expansion of enterprise scale help to reduce the constraint of return risk to a certain extent. Finally, this paper proposes some policies and suggestions to enhance enterprise participation in basic research from the perspective of promoting industrial development and social equity.