Exploring Impact of Governmental Non-R&D funding on Scientific Research Activities in Chinese Universities

Governmental non-R&D funding is an important policy tool to promote university scientific research expenditure and increase the quantity and efficiency of university scientific research output. This paper selects the data of 500 public universities in China from 2014 to 2018 to empirically test the impact of governmental non-R&D funding on scientific research activities of universities and investigate the heterogeneity among universities at different level. Our results show that the governmental non-R&D funding can effectively promote the scientific research expenditure in universities, and the promotion effect is stronger in second-rank universities. Meanwhile, the non-R&D funding can significantly promote the scientific research output of universities. Furthermore, the non-R&D funding has a positive U-shape effect on the scientific research output efficiency of universities. That is, there is a certain threshold of the non-R&D funding, when the non-R&D funding exceeds this value, it is more conducive to promoting the improvement of the scientific research output efficiency of universities. However, the U-shape curve between non-R&D funding and scientific research output efficiency will be sharpened for the second-rank universities. That indicates the less-prestigious universities need to accumulate more non-scientific research funding in the early stage, but when the threshold value is reached, the positive impact of non-R&D funding on the efficiency will be greater.