such as gender, race, human capital, social capital of staff. Therefore, in this section,
we will review and comment on the literature concerning impact factors of uni-
versity research efficiency, in order to clearly present the analyzing logics and main
conclusions of related research, and provide a reasonable analysis framework for
the following quantitative analysis.
6.1.1 Environmental Factors at Macro Level................
From the existing studies, there are two major environmental factors impacting on
university research efficiency, one is the regional economy status where one uni-
versity is located, the other is university clusters. Thefirst factor impacts on uni-
versity research efficiency through research grants, transferring of research
knowledge, and the local needs for talents. The second factor impacts on university
research efficiency through the spillover of knowledge, the competition between
universities, and the cluster effects.
6.1.1.1 Regional Economy Conditions
Enhancing research investment and optimizing the resource allocation are the
preliminary conditions for universities to improve the research quality and effec-
tiveness, however, the development of regional economy largely determines the
resources a university could obtain and the direction of research development.^1 For
example, in order to unravel the influencing factors of research efficiency of
German universities, Kempkes and Pohl ( 2010 ) used DEA efficiency scores as
dependent variable, and per capita GDP and other local factors as explanatory
variables, and showed that the universities located in rich regions (most in western
Germany) tend to have higher efficiency scores than those located in relatively poor
areas (most in eastern Germany). They concluded that even if there were many
factors contributing to the gaps between universities located in rich and poor
regions, the local economy condition was the most essential one.
Concerning how local economy impacts on research efficiency, there are mainly
two reasons. On the one hand, local economy determines thefinancial investment
level to university research. Being placed at the center of regional science advances
and technology innovations, innovation capacity of local universities have direct
impact on local economic structure and development. According to international
statistics, almost every country or economy highly emphasize the research grants
(^1) Among all 211Us, there are 13 of them under the administration of central government (namely
China Ministry of Education), and 110 of them under the administration of local governments.
However, either those 211Us administered by central or local governments, the research devel-
opment and resource investment of most of these universities are influenced and constrained by
their local economic development.
262 6 Exploring Factors Impacting on Research Efficiency...