Abstract:     Currently, there are increasingly fierce technological competition, intensified anti-globalization of international trade, and more difficulty in relying on the import of key and core industrial technologies. At the same time, innovation has shown the characteristics of systematic complexity, high uncertainty and externalities, which leads to the lack of innovation motivation on the part of enterprises. In the transformation from "Made in China" into "Created in China", the government should play its role in inspiring enterprises′ passion and energy in devoting to innovation. What worth noticing is that identification of high-tech enterprises has become a powerful policy tool in guiding high-tech enterprises to make innovation. However, the prevailing literature has disparate opinions on the effects of implementing the identification policy. What′s more, the previous studies focused mainly on a certain stage of the innovation process when discussing the effects of the identification policy. So, this still needs to be explored further.
    The process of enterprise innovation includes stages of R&D input, output of achievements and the realization of innovation efficiency, and these stages are interconnected and chained. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the chain effects of the identification policy on enterprise innovation and probe into the comprehensive effects of the identification policy by taking into account the whole process of innovation chain. Meanwhile, due to the heterogeneity of the goals and strategies at each stage of the innovation chain and the variant degrees of information symmetry, there are obviously different impacts of innovation policies on different stages of the innovation chain. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to deconstruct the innovation chain and open the black box of the mechanism of identification policy influencing each stage of the innovation chain. As such, the current study firstly built a model to test empirically the chain effects of identification of high-tech enterprises on enterprise innovation performance and the transmitting paths. Then, the mechanism of identification policy impacting enterprise innovation process was explored from three aspects, namely, signal mechanism, lever mechanism and trigger mechanism. Finally, policymaking implications were suggested on the basis of the theoretical analysis and empirical study results. The study looked into the influential effects of identification of high-tech enterprises on enterprise innovation and its underlying mechanism for the reference of optimizing and improving policy design.
    The study selected the listed firms in the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets from 2012-2019 as the sample to explore the impacts of high-tech enterprises identification on enterprise innovation and its underlying mechanism. The results showed that: (1) High-tech enterprises identification was significantly positively related to the R&D investment of enterprises and output of scientific and technological achievements of enterprises; (2) There were multiple indirect paths through which identification of high-tech enterprises influenced enterprise innovation performance. Innovative investment and its outcomes played moderating role in the process respectively and their chain moderating effects were significant. Meanwhile, identification of high-tech enterprises was found to negatively directly related to enterprise innovation performance, resulting in the insignificant overall effect, which meant that the overall effect of high-tech enterprises identification on innovation performance might be hindered; (3) Based on the discussion of the above results and the heterogeneity of the goals and strategies at each stage of the innovation chain, the mechanism of variant effects of identification on different stages of enterprise innovation process was explored from three dimensions, namely, signal mechanism, lever mechanism and trigger mechanism. 
    The results revealed that at the innovation investment stage, the signal mechanism of high-tech enterprises identification encouraged external financing to enter the innovation chain, thus increasing the R&D investment of enterprises. At the innovation output stage, identification of high-tech enterprises played a leverage role in urging enterprises to seek for industry-university-research cooperation, thus promoting the output of scientific and technological achievements of enterprises. And, at the stage of producing innovation performance, accredited quality was a key and core situational variable in high-tech enterprises identification triggering enterprise innovation performance. When the identified quality of high-tech enterprises was high, identification policy had a significant positive impact on innovation performance.
     Based on the previous study, the contribution of this study is mainly reflected in the following three aspects. Firstly, different from the previous studies focusing on the relationship between identification of high-tech enterprises and a certain stage in the process of enterprise innovation, this study analyzed the impacts of identification of high-tech enterprises policy on enterprise innovation performance and its multiple transmission paths by taking the whole process of innovation chain into consideration. Thus, it expanded the horizon of research on the effects of innovation policy by overcoming the shortage of studying the effects of identification of high-tech enterprises policy only on one stage of innovation process. This study can provide a new perspective for the reference of relevant studies. Secondly, this study explored the signal mechanism and leverage mechanism of high-tech enterprises identification policy on the innovation process, which opened the black box of the effects of high-tech enterprises identification policy on the innovation process, echoing the call for paying attention to the characteristics of each stage of the innovation chain and their interrelationship in the research of high-tech enterprises identification policy. Finally, the study uncovered the phenomenon of the hinderance effect of high-tech enterprises identification policy on enterprise innovation performance and analyzed its reasons, and revealed that the identified quality would be the trigger condition of high-tech enterprises identification policy in promoting innovation performance. This provides a theoretical reference for policymaking departments to optimize the high-tech enterprises identification policy so as to cope with the challenge of enterprises using tactics to take advantage of innovation policy.

Key words:  identification of high-tech enterprise, innovation chain, effect, mechanism