High-technology development zones and innovation in knowledge-intensive service firms: Evidence from Chinese A-share listed firms

Academic attention has been increasingly focused on the relationship between the practice of development zones and firm innovation. This paper explores the impact effect and mechanism of the establishment of high-tech development zones on the innovation behavior of knowledge-intensive service enterprises using data from A-share listed companies from 2005 to 2019. It is found that the establishment of high-tech development zones has a significant positive effect on the improvement of innovation capability among knowledge-intensive service enterprises. After mitigating the endogeneity problem, considering the sample selection problem, and conducting other robustness tests, the estimation results still support the baseline findings. Meanwhile, the innovation effect of high-tech zone establishment shows significant heterogeneity. Specifically, the impact of high-technology development zone establishment on firms' innovation capacity is most significant among technology service firms. In addition, the effect of high-tech development zone establishment on firms' innovation capability is more significant if the firms are located in national high-tech zones, or the eastern region, or in regions with high openness. Therefore, regions should actively optimize their upgrading and transformation of existing high-tech zones, strengthen the integration between high-tech zones, and actively guide the innovative development of knowledge-intensive service enterprises in high-tech zones.