Is Equity Incentive a "Booster" or a "Brake"? Researcher Ownership, Patent Maintenance Strategy, and Value Dissipation: An Empirical Study Based on the Behavioral Agency Model

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Research Data Description and Analysis

This study investigates the complex dynamics of technology transfer within the framework of the Behavioral Agency Model (BAM), specifically examining how researcher ownership—granted through the "Empowerment Reform"—influences the commercialization value of scientific achievements. We hypothesize a non-linear relationship where equity incentives serve as a "Booster" by aligning researcher interests with institutional goals, but may transition into a "Brake" at higher thresholds. This transition is characterized by "Value Dissipation," where loss aversion or risk-shifting behaviors lead to suboptimal patent maintenance strategies and diminished transaction outcomes.

To test these hypotheses, we constructed a hand-collected dataset comprising 127 manually verified patent transfer transactions originating from a leading Chinese research university (USTC) between 2021 and 2023. This data was triangulated from three authoritative professional sources: the National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and university disclosure offices for legal status and equity proportions; Incopat for technical metrics such as citations and maintenance periods; and TianYanCha for buyer corporate profiles. The resulting dataset provides a granular view of the patent lifecycle. Our primary independent variable is the researcher ownership ratio (var13), while the dependent variables are the latest transaction value (var14) and school-appraised value (var18). To ensure statistical robustness, we performed log-normalization on all financial data to correct for skewness and winsorized continuous variables at the 1st and 99th percentiles to mitigate the impact of extreme outliers.

Our notable findings reveal that while moderate equity incentives effectively extend patent maintenance and improve technical quality, excessively high ownership can lead to a "maintenance trap." In this scenario, the costs of maintaining a patent portfolio do not yield proportional increases in market value, indicating a dissipation of economic potential. These results suggest that the ownership ratio should be interpreted as a proxy for the researcher’s strategic decision-making power rather than a mere financial reward. For instance, a declining time-to-transfer (date_diff) coupled with high equity indicates enhanced commercialization efficiency. This data serves as a critical resource for policy-makers and University Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) to calibrate optimal equity splits. It further allows the academic community to replicate behavioral studies on how internal institutional incentives drive external market performance in the evolving landscape of Chinese innovation reform.