Abstract
•Business incubator capacities impact on the regional innovation performance.•Basic service and financial capacities have less impact than incubation capacity.•Regional communication infrastructure is playing an important moderating role.•Policy makers should focus more on creating free knowledge transfer platforms.
Recent years have witnessed the fast development of business incubators in many emerging economies, such as China. Business incubators are seen as important facilitators for innovation which provide office space, equipment, mentoring services, as well as financial, legal and administrative supports for technology entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Much investment has been undertaken to facilitate the development of business incubators, for example in financial frameworks, human resource development and communication infrastructure. This paper investigates the effects of business incubator capacities on the regional innovation performance, using a panel representing 31 Chinese provinces. This study finds that three capacities of business incubators have significant impacts on the regional innovation performance, while the incubation capacity appears to have a much greater effect than the basic capacity and the finance capacity. Moreover, this study also identifies that the regional communication infrastructure is an important moderator of the relationship between business incubator capacities and the regional innovation performance. This paper supports the view that emerging economies should encourage the development of business incubators in order to promote the development of technology entrepreneurs and domestic innovation performance, but more focus should be on creating free knowledge transfer platforms.