Abstract
As a crucial vehicle for industrial development, development zones have been tasked with the dual policy mission of developing both local competitive industries and emerging industries through practical exploration, reflecting the characteristics of both path dependence and path creation. Given their higher degrees of industrial concentration, policy focus, and openness to foreign trade, the industrial evolution of development zones may exhibit unique characteristics compared to other regions. Based on this, taking the first batch of national economic and technological development zones (ETDZs) as examples, this paper uses multi-source data such as the 1998-2013 industrial enterprise database, and employs methods including logistic models to examine the typical facts, influencing mechanisms and their heterogeneity effects of industrial evolution in development zones. The results show that: (1) During the study period, a total of 534 new (competitive) industries (hereafter "new industries") emerged across the 14 ETDZs, with the proportions of path-dependent and path-creation new industries fluctuating around 45% and 55%, respectively. This suggests an evolution pattern dominated by path creation and supplemented by path dependency. In quantity, technology-intensive industries are the most numerous (326) and labor-intensive industries are the fewest (96). Regionally, Ningbo, Dalian, Tianjin, and Guangzhou ETDZs generated the most new industries, and the same ETDZ could experience different industrial evolution paths at different periods. (2) Leading industry policies contribute to path dependence of industrial evolution in development zones, while foreign-invested enterprises promote path creation. In terms of heterogeneity, the former significantly promotes the path dependence trend of labor- and technology-intensive industries, while the latter has a positive effect on the path-creation of capital- and technology-intensive industries. (3) Regarding the transmission mechanism, leading industry policies promote path dependence through agglomeration effects, while foreign-invested enterprises promote path-creation through innovation effects. However, such innovation effects have not effectively spilled over to domestic enterprises in the same industry. This paper contributes special-scale empirical evidence to evolutionary economic geography, challenges the established understanding that regional industrial evolution is predominantly characterized by path dependence, and offers important policy implications for the industrial transformation and upgrading of development zones.
| Translated title of the contribution | Typical facts and influencing mechanisms of industrial evolution in development zones: Taking the first batch of national economic and technological development zones as examples |
|---|---|
| Original language | Chinese (Traditional) |
| Pages (from-to) | 1814-1835 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Journal | Dili Xuebao/Acta Geographica Sinica |
| Volume | 81 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2026 |
UN SDGs
This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
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SDG 9 Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
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