Study on Innovation Efficiency of Provincial Innovation System in China Based on the "Four-three Structure"

Regional innovation process is considered to be two stages: technology innovation stage and technical economic transformation stage. "Four-three Structure" of regional innovation system presents 4 dimensions: innovation input, innovation main body, innovation content and innovation output. These two theories match well. So, Two-stage model of regional innovation efficiency is built based on "Four-three Model". DEA is used for the innovation efficiency evaluation of the first stage, second stage and the whole stage of innovation process, as it has been wildly used for efficiency evaluation of multiple inputs and multiple outputs system. The empirical analysis of regional innovation efficiency of 31 provinces in China finds that: technical economic efficiency is relatively low in general; innovation efficiency is relatively independent from economic and the scale of innovation.