The Scientific and Technological Innovation Performance of Chinese World-Class Universities and its Influencing Factors

This paper explores the scientific & technological innovation performance of world-class universities in China from 2014 to 2019, based on the super-efficiency DEA model and Malmquist index. Then we provide a novel five-dimensional analysis framework to research influencing factors of their S&T innovation efficiency with the Tobit-DEA model. The results show that 36.6% of the sample universities are DEA efficient, and their efficiency varies according to their type and location. Besides, the technical efficiency index of universities is relatively high and the total factor productivity is volatile, which are reflected in the ability of transforming scientific research achievements into practical productivity. From the perspective of dynamic analysis, the sample universities expand slowly in the frontier of S&T innovation efficiency. In addition, the S&T innovation performance is highly related to the input quality and matching structure of scientific research elements, government relevance, and industry-academia-research collaboration level. Among these main factors, the high proportion of full-time teachers with senior titles, reasonable resource allocation structure and government support have significant positive impact, whereas the number of participants in international academic has negative impact.