The Innovation Motivation Mechanism of Chinese Grassroots Cadres Driven by Multi-Faceted Goals: Evidence from an Online Survey in a Central Chinese City

Having goals such as gaining reputation and obtaining a promotion motivates grassroots cadres in China to innovate, resulting in better local governance-related performance. However, perceived personal risk related to accountability systems fosters a mentality of blame avoidance among these cadres, hindering their willingness to innovate. This study applied a cross-sectional questionnaire survey and explored the relationship between goals (including egoistic and altruistic goals) and innovation motivation as well as the moderating effects of blame avoidance. To this end, an online investigation was conducted of 464 grassroots cadres (32% women) aged 20 to 62 years from a region in central China. The results showed that having goals overall, as well as having egoistic and altruistic goals, is significantly positively associated with innovation motivation. Blame avoidance orientation weakened the association between altruistic goals and innovation motivation. Based on the study results, we consider that institutional optimization requires greater fault tolerance to prompt innovation among grassroots cadres and greater rewards for altruistic-oriented innovation to improve innovation motivation.