Abstract:    In recent years, China′s digital economy has achieved leapfrog development and it is becoming a new engine for high-quality economic development. The update and iteration of digital technology boost the development of technological production and transfer mode to scientific and intelligent, the boundaries of regional economic activities are weakening, and the cost of acquiring knowledge and information in the network has also decreased significantly. Technology transfer has strong externalities and network effects, deeply embedded in the regional innovation environment. Regional innovation environment can be divided into soft environment and hard environment. The disequilibrium of the hard environment in regional space leads to the heterogeneous orientation of the technology transfer network, while the soft environment can be changed by human intervention in a short time and has an impact on regional technology transfer activities.
    Judging from the existing research literature, the formation mechanism of the technology transfer network is analyzed qualitatively from different perspectives. The relevant research results of digital economy, regional soft environment and technology transfer provide important reference for this paper. However, the research on whether the digital economy can drive the formation of the regional technology transfer network is relatively few and there is still room for expansion. This also provides an opportunity to make marginal contributions to this paper. Firstly, this paper explores the influence of digital economy on the formation of technology transfer network at the regional level through point-to-point data of technology transfer. We discuss the relationship between digital economy and technology transfer from the perspective of digital economy compatibility and digital economy development level, and expand the research space of digital economy enabling technology transfer at the regional level. Secondly, from the five aspects of government governance environment, legal environment, financial environment, technology environment and market environment, the paper quantitatively describes the influence of regional soft environment on technology transfer network, providing empirical evidence for optimization of regional soft environment and realizing "Overtaking on curves" in technology transfer. Thirdly, digital economy development and regional soft environment factors are incorporated in the study of the technology transfer network, which enriches the relevant theories of determinants of technology transfer.
   This study uses patent rights transfer data to construct an inter-regional technology transfer network, and analyzes the local structure of the network with Motifs Analysis method. The influence of digital economy and regional soft environment on the formation of the technology transfer network is explored by using the Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM). The results show that the technology transfer pattern is mutually beneficial and it has poor network transitivity. The development of the digital economy stimulates the prosperity of regional technology transfer. But the development difference of the digital economy leads to "Richman′s Club" and the dilemma of "technology island" in the technology transfer network, which will further deepen the technology gap between regions. Among the regional soft environment factors, legal environment, technological environment, government governance environment and financial environment have different degrees of positive effect on technology transfer. The market environment positively moderates the impact of the digital economy on technology transfer, and when the market environment is better, the digital economy plays a more significant role in promoting regional technology transfer.
   As an organic component of the regional innovation system, technology transfer is the power source of regional innovation ecological evolution. Based on a series of empirical evidence that digital economy and regional soft environment promote the formation of technology transfer network obtained in this study, we draw three implications for improving regional technology transfer: (1) Accelerate the development of 5G commercial, artificial intelligence and other advanced digital technology, and consolidate the advantages of the digital technology. Enterprises in regions with digital disadvantages will be subsidized for digital investment to enhance the accessibility of digital economy and narrow the regional "technology gap". (2) Establish a digital single market for technology trading to break the fragmentation of the technology trading system. Besides, it can also provide technology demand matching and scientific research resource matching services for technology subjects, which will improve the efficiency and breadth of technology demand matching. (3) More attention should be paid to improving the government governance environment, increasing transfer payments to less developed regions, and implementing post-incentive subsidies for technology transfer. At the same time, the government also pays attention to the construction of digital rule of law to improve the regional legal environment, and digitally writes the technology transfer process into smart contracts to ensure that the technology transfer process is transparent and traceable. Improve the risk compensation management of technology transfer loans, stimulate the technology transfer activity of enterprises in the region in the form of special funds and financial support.

Key words:  digital economy, soft environment, regional technology transfer, exponential random graph model (ERGM)