What Drives Internet Industrial Competitiveness in China? The Evolvement of Cultivation Factors Index

ABSTRACT

The rapid and continuous growth of the Internet industry is highly important to China’s economy. Based on Porter’s diamond model and using data from 2002 to 2016, we construct a cultivation factor index of China’s Internet industrial competitiveness and its four composite indicators. We study the evolvement of the indexes over 15 years and analyze events that were key to the growth of cultivation factors of China’s Internet industrial competitiveness. The findings are as follows: (1) the cultivation factor index of Internet industrial competitiveness grows fast in waves, with alternating periods of steady growth and leap growth; (2) innovation in technology application, not technology itself, promotes the rapid increase of index; and (3) the influence of environmental opportunities and governments polices is demonstrated in evolvement of the index.

KEY WORDS:

• China
• cultivation factor
• entropy weight
• Internet industrial competitiveness

Additional information

Funding

Financial support for this research project was provided by China National Social Science Fund Project (grant number 15CSH017).