How to Improve Regional Innovation Quality From the Perspective of Green Development? Findings From Entropy Weight Method and Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Innovation is increasingly becoming the most crucial and effective way to tackle climate change and environmental pollution. Recently, innovation quality has received continuous attention from scholars, entrepreneurs and policymakers. It is necessary to measure innovation quality from the perspective of green development. Based on the statistics data of 30 provincial-level innovation systems in China, this study comprehensively evaluates regional innovation quality and identifies the configuration of factors which could lead to high regional innovation quality. Firstly, this study establishes an indicator system of measuring regional innovation quality which includes seven indicators from three aspects of technological, economic and ecological benefit of innovative activities, and entropy weight method is used to comprehensively evaluate regional innovation quality. The result reveals there are big differences between different regions in China in innovation quality. In terms of three economic regions in China, innovation quality in the eastern region is the highest, followed by the central region and the lowest in the western region. Then, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method is applied, which uncovers three configurations of factors that could lead to high regional innovation quality. Finally, the conclusion of this study provides policy pathways for improving regional innovation quality.