Can high-speed rail promote regional technological innovation? An explanation based on city network centrality

The relationship between high-speed railway and technological innovation has attracted wide interest of scholars, but there are few studies pay attention to the role of urban status in the impact of high-speed rail on innovation from the perspective of urban development. In this paper, we construct the theoretical framework of high-speed railway, city network centrality and regional technology innovation, and explore the influence mechanism of high-speed railway on regional technological innovation. Referring to the concept of global urban interlocking network model in Taylor and Derudder (2015), we measure the city network centrality of China's prefecture-level administrative regions based on advanced producer services (APS), and empirically test the mediating effect of city network centrality in high-speed rail's influence on regional technological innovation using prefecture-level data in China from 2007 to 2016. The results suggest that the city network centrality is a mechanism by which high-speed railway affects regional technological innovation. The construction of high-speed railway promotes regional technological innovation by improving the city network centrality. In addition, the promotion of high-speed railway on technological innovation capability varies with urban features, where the small-scale and relatively backward cities gain more benefits from the construction of high-speed railway.