Do government innovation preferences enhance ecological resilience in resource-based cities?—Based on mediating effect and threshold effect perspectives

The ecological resilience of resource-based cities reflects the resilience of the ecological environment in resource-based areas to recover after resource development activities, and good ecological resilience holds great significance for the sustainability of the development of resource-based cities. Government innovation preferences are a solid foundation for implementing an innovation-driven strategy and an important guarantee for realizing an efficient production mode. (the purpose of the study) Therefore, to investigate whether government innovation preferences can promote the level of ecological resilience in resource-based cities. (sample information and empirical methods) This paper establishes a mediating effect model and a threshold effect model and empirically analyzes 2009–2020 panel data covering 113 resource-based cities in China as an example. (main findings) The results show the following: (1) the primary term of government innovation preferences has a positive effect on the ecological resilience of resource-based cities, and the secondary term has a negative effect, with a decreasing marginal effect. Additionally, the educational level has a mediating effect on the mechanism of the impact of government innovation preferences on the ecological resilience of resource-based cities. (2) The role of government innovation preferences in the ecological resilience of resource-based cities is heterogeneous: The impact of government innovation preferences on the ecological resilience of resource-based cities in the western region is stronger than that in the central region, and the impact of government innovation preferences on the ecological resilience of medium-sized resource-based cities is stronger than that of large resource-based cities. (3) The role of environmental decentralization produces a single threshold effect with a threshold value of 2.3993 in the impact of the mechanism of government innovation preferences on the ecological resilience of resource-based cities. (contributions and policy implications) The results of this paper can provide theoretical support for the government to set a reasonable innovation preference intensity, and they provide a practical guarantee for the central government to give more environmental governance power to local governments.