关键词: 高校技术转移, 科研产出, 科研资助, 中介作用, 调节作用

Abstract: With the implementation of innovation-driven development strategy, Chinese universities, as an important part of China′s innovation system, must not only undertake the basic functions of teaching and scientific research, but also undertake the social service functions of transforming scientific and technological achievements into productive forces (the "third mission" of universities). As an important form of the "third mission" of universities, the technology transfer activities of Chinese universities have grown rapidly. Therefore, the academic community has raised new concerns about the technology transfer of Chinese universities, which relate to that is the commercialization-oriented technology transfer activity good or bad for the scientific research activities? This paper thus focuses on the impact of university technology transfer on scientific research outputs.
Based on the literature on the influence of university technology transfer on scientific research activities, we argue that universities can obtain financial support for research activities through technology transfer, and can also interact with enterprises to obtain new ideas for scientific basic and applied research. Thus, university technology transfer has significant positive impacts on its publication and patent outputs (H1 and H2). Then, we discuss the different nature of government and private research funding, and propose that universities that realize technology transfer can not only convey the signals that the research results and academic standards are recognized to the government and peers, but also help to combine scientific research ideas with the country′s major needs. Thus, university technology transfer has a significant positive impact on its access to government funding (H3). Government funding play mediating roles in the positive impact of technology transfer on the publication and patent outputs (H4a and H4b). Meanwhile, we argue that universities engaged in technology transfer have the experience of industrializing basic and applied research results, and can also convey the practicality of scientific research results to the industry and obtain more industrial financial support. Thus, university technology transfer has a significant positive impact on its access to private funding (H5). Private funding play mediating roles in the positive impact of technology transfer on the publication and patent outputs (H6a and H6b). Finally, we suggest that as the funding basis for scientific research activities in universities, government funding and private funding may also affect the degree of demand and utilization efficiency of universities′ technology transfer. When universities have more government funding, the level of funding required by researchers for technology transfer activities is relatively low. And also, when universities have more private funding, it will have reduced demand for financial support and learning opportunities from technology transfer activities. Thus, we propose that government funding plays negative moderating roles in the positive impact of technology transfer on university publication and patent outputs (H7a and H7b). And private funding also plays negative moderating roles in the positive impact of technology transfer on university publication and patent outputs (H8a and H8b).
Using a dataset of technology transfer and scientific research of 106 Chinese universities belonging to "211 Project" or co-sponsored by province and ministry in 2008-2014, we examine the impact of universities′ technology transfer on their publication and patent output, and also explore the mediating and moderating roles of government and private research funding. The results show that, first, the university technology transfer has heterogeneous effects on different types of scientific research output. Specifically, universities′ technology transfer has no impact on the quantity of their publications, but has a significantly positive impact on their patent applications. Second, universities′ technology transfer has significantly positive effects on both the government and private funding, and the mediating roles of government and private funding in the relationship between universities′ technology transfer and patent output are confirmed. Third, government funding negatively moderates the relationship between universities′ technology transfer and their publication output, while private funding negatively moderates the relationship between universities′ technology transfer and their patent output.
The contributions of this article are as follows: First, we reveal that the effect of technology transfer on the research output of different natures is not the same, thus expanding our understandings about the effects of universities′ technology transfer activities from the perspective of the nature of research activities (basic or applied nature). This paper finds that the positive impact of technology transfer in China′s universities on publication output is not significant, which is different from the positive findings of existing research on US and German. This suggests that excessive technology transfer activities do have negative effects such as biased application research and delayed paper publication, thus offsetting the potential benefits. In contrast, the applied research of universities in China has benefited a lot from technology transfer activities, which is conducive to creating more invention patents.
Second, starting from the chain of scientific research activities, the research funding sources are included in the research framework of the effects of universities′ technology transfer, which verifies the mediating roles of government and private research funding in the relationship between university technology transfer and patent output. Thus, our research deepens the understanding about the influencing process of the university technology transfer on its scientific research outputs. To sum up, university technology transfer can be used as a signal to convey the reputation and academic level of researchers and attract government and private financial support, thus promoting the outputs of applied research.
Finally, the study also finds the moderating effects of government and private research funding on the impact of universities′ technology transfer, and identifies the financial conditions on the role of university technology transfer in its scientific research outputs. Different from the existing research which only focus on the direct impact of research funding on the scientific research outputs, this paper confirms that government and private funding are the contextual factors of scientific research activities in universities. Government funding mainly constricts the role of technology transfer in universities′ basic research activities, while private funding mainly constricts the role of technology transfer in universities′ applied research activities, thus deepening our understanding about the diverse mechanisms of research funding from different sources.

Key words:  university technology transfer, scientific research output, research funding, mediating role, moderating role