数字技术与传统产业快速融合,深刻改变了经济社会的生产和运行方式,激发了创新活动新场景、新赛道,对提升地区创新质量并助力创新驱动发展带来新动能。基于数字经济与创新质量的内涵,构建数字经济和创新质量的指标评价体系,以中国271个地级及以上城市为研究样本,研究分析数字经济对创新质量的影响及时空特征。研究发现:(1)数字经济能显著提升地区创新质量,通过将创新质量分解为创新潜力质量、创新溢出质量和创新产出质量,发现数字经济对创新溢出质量的正向促进作用最大,对创新潜力质量的正向促进作用最小;(2)数字经济对创新质量的影响具有显著的边际递增效应,即数字经济水平越高,对创新质量的正向促进作用越强,数字经济对创新溢出质量的门槛值最低,对创新产出质量的门槛值最高;(3)数字经济促进地区创新质量提升具有显著的空间溢出效应,对创新溢出质量的空间溢出效应最强且最显著,对创新潜力质量和创新产出质量的空间溢出效应不显著。研究结论有助于进一步理解数字经济对地区创新质量的深层作用过程,为地区高效利用数字经济赋能创新质量提升提供客观证据和政策依据。

The rapid integration of digital technology and traditional industries has profoundly changed the production and operation modes of the economy and society, stimulated new scenarios and new tracks of innovation activities, and brought new momentum to improve the quality of regional innovation and help innovation-driven development. Based on the connotation of digital economy and innovation quality, an index evaluation system of the digital economy and innovation quality was constructed, and 271 cities at the prefecture level and above in China were taken as research samples to study and analyze the impact of digital economy on the innovation quality and its temporal and spatial characteristics. The results showed that: (1) digital economy can significantly improve regional innovation quality. By dividing innovation quality into innovation potential quality, innovation spillover quality and innovation output quality, it is found that digital economy has the largest positive promoting effect on innovation spillover quality and the least positive promoting effect on innovation potential quality; (2) the impact of digital economy on innovation quality has a significant marginal increasing effect, that is, the higher the level of digital economy, the stronger the positive promoting effect on innovation quality, the digital economy has the lowest threshold value for innovation spillover quality and the highest threshold value for innovation output quality; and (3) digital economy has a significant spatial spillover effect on the improvement of regional innovation quality, and the spatial spillover effect on innovation spillover quality is the strongest and most significant, while the spatial spillover effect on innovation potential quality and innovation output quality is not significant. The research conclusions are helpful to further understand the deep action process of digital economy on regional innovation quality, and they have provided objective evidence and policy basis for regional efficient use of digital economy to enable innovation quality improvement.