Data Related to Paper Entitled "Linking Cultural Distance to Technological Spillovers: A Perspective from Chinese Dialects"

Technological spillovers are a crucial driver for advancing technological progress in less developed regions and promoting balanced development. However, cultural distance may undermine the efficiency of such spillovers. Using patent data and dialectal distribution data form China (2003-2021), this study examines the impact of cultural distance on intercity technological spillovers. The findings present that dialectal distance significantly weakens the intensity of technological spillovers between cities, and this effect stems from cultural identity rather than linguistic barriers. Furthermore, dialectal distance hinders technological spillovers by obstructing collaborative innovation and technology transfer between cities. However, these mechanisms are limited to cases where cities act as secondary contributors in collaboration or as technology recipients. Further analysis suggests that dialectal distance hinders the complementary dynamics of technological structures between cities but does not impede the improvement of innovation quality. This study provides new evidence and perspectives for understanding cross-cultural spillovers of technological innovations.