Impact of Innovation Ecosystem Resilience in the New Energy Vehicle Industry on Corporate Profitability

To address the widespread challenge of low profitability in the new energy vehicle (NEV) industry, this study adopts the resilience of innovation ecosystems as a theoretical framework. Based on panel data from 71 publicly listed companies in China’s NEV industry from 2017 to 2023, a fixed-effects model is employed to empirically examine the impact and mechanisms of innovation ecosystem resilience on corporate profitability. The findings reveal that innovation ecosystem resilience significantly enhances corporate profitability. Further mechanism analysis provides compatible evidence for the narrative that this resilience influences profitability through enhancing corporate value and production efficiency. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the positive impact is more pronounced for firms with low R&D intensity than for those with high R&D intensity. Additionally, the effect is most significant for upstream enterprises in the industrial chain, followed by midstream enterprises, while it is statistically insignificant for downstream enterprises. Therefore, it is recommended to enhance the resilience of the innovation ecosystem by establishing industry-university-research collaboration platforms, improving corporate value and production/operational efficiency, supporting low-R&D enterprises, and promoting industrial chain synergy, in order to boost corporate profitability.