Journal of Tourism & Hospitality
Open Access

Internet, Regional Innovation and Technological Progress

Shenghao Yang^{* *}Correspondence: Shenghao Yang, Department of Economics and Finance, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, People's Republic of China, Email:

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Introduction

The Tourism Information and Communication Technology (TICT) represented by the internet is an important driving force for technological progress [1]. As far as Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) is concerned, it improves regional GTFP from two aspects: Industrial structure upgrading and innovation [2]. This tourism impact includes both speed and quality. In particular, the impact of the Internet on the quality of innovation is an important direction of current research. In fact, scholars have recognized that the internet can accelerate regional innovation [3].

Description

The internet breaks through the limitations of spatial distance and accelerates the flow of information and knowledge sharing. This is not only conducive to accelerating independent R and D in the region, improving their R and D efficiency by easing the information asymmetry of R and D entities, but also generating positive externalities in innovation activities through knowledge spillovers and cooperation, thereby further improving innovation output in other regions. Undoubtedly, these processes have some heterogeneous and nonlinear characteristics. In other words, the positive impact of the Internet on innovation will vary with factors such as regional economic development level, industry and degree of inter-regional contact. Especially, this promotion effect can be further augmented when urban Internet penetration and employee wages rise to their respective threshold levels. However, how internet affects innovation quality remains to be studied. On the one hand, the internet may enhance the knowledge reserves of innovators through the dissemination of information and knowledge, thereby improving the quality of innovation output; on the other hand, the flow of information facilitates technological imitation, which may produce a large number of low-quality imitation innovations. These two opposite mechanisms may cause the impact of the internet on the innovation quality to be different from the innovation quantity.

Currently, the travel development of the internet has entered a new stage, that is, the digital economy has been generated through the integration of big data and other technologies [4]. In this context, the importance of analyzing its relationship with innovation quality is further highlighted [5]. This contains many interesting research directions. First of all, it is worth noting that just as ICT is divided into two sectors: Production and use, the digital economy is also divided into two parts: Digital industrialization and industrial digitization. The former is driven by innovation, while the latter further accelerates innovation. Therefore, how to grasp the internal connection between the two parts and their logical relationship with innovation is an important research topic. Secondly, the travel emergence of this new production method has caused many changes in the direction of innovation.

Conclusion

Digital financial innovation, green innovation, etc. are accelerating development. It would also be valuable to examine how the internet or digital economy has facilitated the expansion and quality improvement of this type of innovation. In a word, whether from the internet to the digital economy, from the innovation quantity to the innovation quality or from traditional innovation to new innovation, they are all important expansion directions of existing research and are of great significance for achieving technological progress and high-quality economic and social development tourism.

References

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