Has marine technology innovation promoted the high-quality development of the marine economy? ——Evidence from coastal regions in China

Abstract In recent years, the Chinese government attaches great importance to the development of a high-quality marine economy. The Ministry of Natural Resources issued the opinions on promoting the high-quality development of the marine economy, which pointed out that technology innovation should play a leading role in the high-quality development of the marine economy. In this paper, we use a comprehensive weight model including the entropy method and the best-worst method (BWM) to measure the level of marine technology innovation in China's coastal regions from 2006 to 2016. Then, we use the threshold regression model to examine the role of marine technology innovation in the high-quality development of the marine economy. The results show that there is a nonlinear relationship between marine technology innovation and high-quality development of the marine economy. Furthermore, we find that when the level of marine technology innovation exceeds a certain threshold, its promotion effect of the high-quality development of the marine economy gradually weakens. Finally, we analyze the reasons for the above findings and discuss the corresponding policy suggestions.