2012 Theses Master's

Varying Significance of Influencing Factors in Developing High-Tech Clusters -- Using Cities of the U.S. and China as Example

Chen, Xia

High-tech clusters have become a popular strategy for city development around the world since 1980s. There are many factors that will influence the development of high-tech clusters. Researchers from a range of disciplines have researched to identify specific ingredients for success of high-tech clusters. However, their perspectives are more confined to the theoretical field, but have not solved the problem of the significance of these factors. This thesis tries to answer the following questions: to what extent those factors proposed by researchers influence the development of hi-tech clusters when compared to traditional industry clusters, and compared to different locations. The analysis mainly builds regression models of the influencing factors of high-tech clusters for both U.S. and China. There are also regression models built for traditional industry clusters which played a role as a control group in the research. The result of the regression analysis shows that in the U.S. venture capital is the most important factor in developing high-tech clusters, while in China, the most powerful factors are the academic institutes and government. Some recommendations are also provided to the planners in the U.S. and China at the end of this thesis.