Abstract:

Marine industry structure is a vital indicator reflecting the quality of marine economic development. At the same time, the upgrading of the marine industry structure is an important factor in accelerating the development of the marine economy and enhancing international competitiveness, and as a result it is crucial for the sustainable development of the marine economy. Schumpeter′s "Economic Development Theory" pointed out that innovation and capital are key factors in the process of industrial structure upgrading. On the one hand, innovation is the essential factor that triggers “creative destruction”; on the other hand, capital is a tool for entrepreneurs to distribute various production factors and resources to new uses, which is a necessary condition for innovation, and an important bridge for transforming innovation to commodities. The upgrading of the marine industry structure is also inseparable from innovation and capital.Studies have shown that although the importance of marine science education and venture capital for the development of marine economy has reached consensus in academia, few scholars have linked these three variables and explored the mechanism of influence between the three variables. This paper firstly analyzes the internal relationship between marine science and education, venture capital and marine industrial structure upgrade based on Schumpeter′s economic development model. On this basis, the panel data of 11 coastal provinces in China from 2006 to 2014 were selected, and the mediation effect and threshold regression model were used for empirical research. The second part constructs the theoretical framework.(1)Marine science and education to promote the upgrading of marine industry structure can be achieved in three aspects. First, marine science and education provides a large amount of human capital for the upgrading of the marine industry structure. Second, marine science and education provides technological progress and innovation for the upgrading of marine industry structure. Third, the management services provided by the Ocean Science and Education Institute can optimize the allocation of marine resources, reduce transaction costs, and ultimately promote the upgrading of the marine industry structure. Therefore, the first hypothesis was proposed. H1: The level of marine science and education is positively related to the regional marine industry structure.(2)In the process of marine science and education promoting the upgrading of marine industry structure, venture capital can play a mediating effect in two aspects. First, provide financial support for marine technology companies, especially SMEs. Second, venture capital provides operational management experience for marine economic technology companies, and further stimulates the R&D and innovation capabilities of innovative companies. Therefore, the second hypothesis was proposed. H2: Venture capital has a mediating effect in the process of marine science and education promoting the upgrading of marine industry structure.(3)Venture capital plays a threshold effect in two aspects. The first one is the scale effect. The scale effect refers to the improvement of economic benefits brought about by the expansion of the scale of funds, that is, the scale of venture capital affects the efficiency of industrial transformation of marine research and development by affecting the forward linkage, financing costs and knowledge spillover of the industrial chain. The second one is the structural effect. The structural effect refers to the degree of specialization or diversification of venture capital activities that can affect the industrial transformation efficiency of marine research and development results. Therefore, the third hypothesis was proposed. H3: When the scale of venture capital exceeds a certain threshold, the promotion of marine science and education to the upgrading of marine industry structure is accelerated. That is to say, under the threshold effect of venture capital, the promotion of marine science and education to the upgrading of marine industry structure can achieve a transition. The empirical models required to test the three hypotheses are elaborated separately. The third part carries out empirical tests and analysis of results. Firstly, the mediation effect test of venture capital was carried out. The results show that marine science and education has a significant role in promoting the upgrading of marine industry structure. The specific performance is that for every level of marine science and education level rise, it will increase the structure of marine industry by 0.998 units, therefore hypothesis 1 is established. At the same time, venture capital has played a significant mediating effect, with a median effect of 0.05 and hypothesis 2 established. The small quantity of mediating effect may be caused by the following two reasons. First, China′s venture capital market and operational mechanism are still not perfect, especially the marine venture investment service system needs to be improved, and its role in promoting the commercialization of marine scientific and technological achievements and industrialization transformation is limited. Second, the evaluation system of marine science and education needs to be improved. The indicators such as scientific research topics and scientific and technological issues are too large, which leads to less consideration of industrialization factors in the research and development of marine scientific research results. Secondly, the threshold regression test of the impact of venture capital was carried out. The results show that there is a threshold value of venture capital in this model, which is 0.0144, and the threshold is significant at the confidence level of1%.The fourth part summarizes the main research conclusions and implications. (1) First, the improvement of the level of marine science and education has a significant role in promoting the upgrading of the marine industry structure. (2) Secondly, venture capital plays an important intermediary role in the process of marine science and education promoting the upgrading of marine industry structure. It is a transmission path for marine science and education to promote the advanced structure of marine industry, but the mediation effect of venture capital is only 0.05. It also has a lot of room for improvement. (3) Third, under the influence of venture capital, the promotion of marine science and education to the upgrading of marine industry structure can achieve a transition. When the venture capital density is less than 0.01, the promotion effect of marine science and education on the marine industry structure is 1.04; when the venture capital density is greater than 0.01, the promotion effect is increased to 1.20. Therefore, in order to achieve a strong ocean, China′s government should pay attention to the development of marine science and education, further improve the venture capital market mechanism, expand the scale of venture capital, and promote the optimization and upgrading of the marine industry structure.

Key words: marine industrial structure upgrading, marine science and education, venture capital, mediation effect, threshold regression