Evaluation analysis and promotion paths of regional green innovation vitality in China
Grey Systems: Theory and Application
ISSN: 2043-9377
Article publication date: 18 July 2023
Issue publication date: 24 October 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this work is to construct a grey entropy comprehensive evaluation model to measure the regional green innovation vitality (GIV) of 31 provinces in China.
Design/methodology/approach
The traditional grey relational proximity and grey relational similarity degree are integrated into the novel comprehensive grey evaluation framework. The evaluation system of regional green innovation vitality is constructed from three dimensions: economic development vitality, innovative transformation power and environmental protection efficacy. The weights of each indicator are obtained by the entropy weight method. The GIV of 31 provinces in China is measured based on provincial panel data from 2016 to 2020. The ward clustering and K-nearest-neighbor (KNN) algorithms are utilized to explore the regional green innovation discrepancies and promotion paths.
Findings
The novel grey evaluation method exhibits stronger ability to capture intrinsic patterns compared with two separate traditional grey relational models. Green innovation vitality shows obvious regional discrepancies. The Matthew effect of China's regional GIV is obvious, showing a basic trend of strong in the eastern but weak in the western areas. The comprehensive innovation vitality of economically developed provinces exhibits steady increasing trend year by year, while the innovation vitality of less developed regions shows an overall steady state of no fluctuation.
Practical implications
The grey entropy comprehensive relational model in this study is applied for the measurement and evaluation of regional GIV, which improves the one-sidedness of traditional grey relational analysis on the proximity or similarity among sequences. In addition, a three-dimensional evaluation system of regional GIV is constructed, which provides the practical guidance for the research of regional development strategic planning as well as promotion paths.
Originality/value
A comprehensive grey entropy relational model based on traditional grey incidence analysis (GIA) in terms of proximity and similarity is proposed. The three-dimensional evaluation system of China's regional GIV is constructed, which provides a new research perspective for regional innovation evaluation and expands the application scope of grey system theory.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors are very grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions to improve the paper.
Funding: This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (22FGLB035) and Social Science Planning Project of Fujian Province of China (FJ2020B088).
Conflict of interests: No potential conflict of interests were reported by the authors.
Citation
Zhou, W., Li, H., Zhang, L., Tian, H. and Fu, M. (2023), "Evaluation analysis and promotion paths of regional green innovation vitality in China", Grey Systems: Theory and Application, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 747-766. https://doi.org/10.1108/GS-02-2023-0008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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