S1 Data -

Major product safety incidents often cause widespread concern among consumers, and these product safety incidents will stimulate consumers’ psychology, change their risk perception, and affect the demand for products and services of risk consumers. The change in consumer demand will eventually lead to a change in firm innovation decisions. Using Chinese firm-level data, this paper employs the news reporting of the Bawang event as a quasi-natural experiment to study the impact of risk perception changes on innovation. The empirical results of this study show that increasing consumers’ risk perception caused by the negative news coverage of defective products motivates firms to increase their innovation. The effects are heterogeneous, where firms with private ownership and in developed regions are more likely to increase innovation activities. This study suggests that the relationship between consumers’ risk perception and firm innovation is primarily driven by market demand. Moreover, the positive effects of risk perception on innovation are more prominent for downstream firms and those having a smaller technological distance.

重大产品安全事件往往会引发消费者的广泛关注，此类事件会对消费者心理产生冲击，改变其风险感知水平，并影响风险涉事消费者对相关产品与服务的需求。消费者需求的变动最终将引发企业创新决策的调整。本文采用中国企业层面数据，以霸王事件（Bawang event）的新闻报道作为准自然实验（quasi-natural experiment），探究风险感知变动对企业创新的影响。本研究的实证结果表明，由缺陷产品负面新闻报道引发的消费者风险感知上升，会激励企业加大创新投入。该效应存在异质性：民营企业以及位于发达地区的企业更倾向于提升创新活动水平。本研究表明，消费者风险感知与企业创新之间的关联主要由市场需求驱动。此外，风险感知对创新的正向促进作用在下游企业以及技术距离更小的企业中更为显著。