On the correlation between innovation performance and DMSP-OLS nighttime stable lights: Evidence from the US

Innovation has been widely acknowledged as one of the key driving forces for regional economic development. Since nighttime lights based on Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Line-scan System has been used as an effective tool to estimate economic growth, a potential correlation between nighttime stable lights (NTSL) and innovation performance has been strongly indicated. To this end, this study examined the relationship between NTSL and innovation performance of 3105 counties in the United States of America through grey relation analysis. In order to test the validity of NTSL mapping of the innovation performance, all the sample data of NTSL and innovation performance were separately grouped into five categories using k-means clustering method, and the deviation between two classifications was calculated. Overall, NTSL shows a noticeable connection to innovation performance with a grey relation grade of 0.76, indicating that NTSL could properly simulate innovation performance with slight deviation, which is mainly caused by differences of industrial structure and natural environment. It is demonstrated that NTSL data could be used as a proxy for regional innovation performance. This study contributes to a better understanding of the relation between NTSL and innovation performance as well as offering an efficient approach to detect the differences in regional innovation performance.