Exploring differences in level of construction innovation: an empirical analysis in China

Innovations can overcome constraints posed by resource depletion, increasing environmental and ecological protection concerns. There is considerable amount of innovation that occurs in the construction industry. Accordingly, construction innovation is receiving increasing attention in China. However, the provincial development level of construction innovation remains unclear. To address this gap, the present study employs data-driven measurement for the level of construction innovation. A total of 25 alternative indexes were selected based on the innovation ecosystem theory. Then, text preprocessing, statistical methods, and search statistics were employed to acquire index data. The indexes weights were determined through expert scoring and a cloud model. The quantitative measurement of the level of construction innovation was finally performed. Additionally, the exploratory results were revealed with the analyses of the overall, regional, and cluster. The results revealed that overall level of construction innovation in China is not high and regional distribution is uneven. Simultaneously, the level of construction innovation is consistent with local economic strength, and it is most sensitive to innovation output in regional level. Moreover, the spatial distribution of the level of construction innovation in China was showed, which has similarity with the characteristics of geographical location. The measurement system this study represents breakthroughs over traditional methods that rely on statistics, cases, or questionnaires, which can be applied to other research fields.