Distribution Patterns and Multilevel Factors of the Innovation Activities of China’s New Energy Vehicle Industry

To better understand the multilevel mechanism of innovation and reveal the distribution and geographical formation of China’s NEV industry innovation, we collect patent data in China’s NEV industry from SIPO and use ArcGIS and HLM to map and analyze its geoinformation from 2009 to 2014. The results show that innovation activities are agglomerated at different scales, but the distribution of individual innovation and collaborative innovation are not similar, especially Pearl River Delta, which shows a great shortage of collaborative innovation. The multilevel effects are complicated. Institutional environment, resources, the regional institutional environment, and infrastructure have positive effects at the local level. Institutional environment is the only positive factor at the regional level. In general, regional factors enhance the positive effects of local factors. However, multilevel mechanism of collaborative innovation is different from the individual innovation, as it is less depended on policies stimulation and local knowledge institutions play a more important role in it. Furthermore, we put forward multilevel policies suggestions that central government should pay more attention on NEV products regulations, institutional environment should be improved at regional and local government should develop knowledge facilities in post-subsidy era. Our study highlights that locals that have advantages would benefit more from multilevel systems.