Influence of marine industrial agglomeration and environmental regulation on marine innovation efficiency-From an innovation value chain perspective

Innovation is an important driving force for realizing high-quality green development of the marine economy. Based on the innovation value chain, this study incorporates three marine waste pollutants into the two-stage marine innovation efficiency research framework and uses the super-efficiency DEA model to measure the overall efficiency and sub-process efficiency of the marine innovation of China's coastal regions from 2006 to 2016. We apply the dynamic panel model and the threshold effect model to empirically test the impact of marine industrial agglomeration and environmental regulation on the efficiency of two-stage marine innovation. We find that (1) during the inspection period, the overall efficiency average of China's marine innovation was 0.99; the marine green R&D efficiency average was 0.67; and the commercialization efficiency average was 1.31. At this stage, the improvement of marine innovation efficiency depends on commercialization efficiency and is restricted to green R&D efficiency. (2) An obvious inverted U-shaped relationship exists between marine industrial agglomeration and marine innovation. Environmental regulations play a significant positive role in promoting marine innovation. (3) An environmental regulation threshold exists in the process of marine industrial agglomeration that affects both the overall and the commercialization processes.