Empowering Rural Tourism Innovation through Government - University Collaboration: An Empirical Analysis Based on Data Mining and Model Prediction

Government support (GS), university-enterprise knowledge transfer (UEKT), and innovation capability (IC) are considered key factors that influence enterprise innovation performance (IP). However, existing research needs to sufficiently elucidate how these factors interrelate in explaining the innovation performance of rural tourism enterprises. This study, grounded in institutional theory, knowledge management theory and dynamic capabilities theory, addresses these knowledge gaps using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method. Empirical data were collected from founders and operators (N=516) of enterprises in critical rural tourism towns (villages) in Guangdong Province, China.