Regional disparities and driving factors of digital technology innovation among Chinese cities: a perspective based on urban patent data

Driven by the current global wave of informatization and digitization, digital technology innovation has emerged as a new engine propelling economic and social development. This paper measures the level of digital technology innovation in 284 prefecture-level cities in China by calculating the number of digital technology patents identified through the International Patent Classification (IPC) matching. It comprehensively employs kernel density analysis and Moran's I method to characterize the spatio-temporal evolution of China's urban digital technology innovation levels. The Dagum Gini coefficient is used to explore regional disparities and their sources in China's urban digital technology innovation levels. Furthermore, a geographical detector is utilized to investigate the driving factors behind these disparities. Results show that: (1) The level of digital technology innovation in China and its four major regions has continued to improve, with significant spatial disparities, but the trend of multi-level differentiation is not evident. (2) Inter-regional disparities are the primary source of overall disparities in digital technology innovation levels, followed by intra-regional disparities and hypervariable density. (3) Factors such as economic development level and fiscal investment in science and technology significantly impact the spatial differentiation of digital technology innovation levels. The combined effect of multiple factors is stronger than that of a single factor, with the level of innovation development and human capital being the most explanatory.