Abstract Based on the urban panel data of China cities from 2000 to 2019, this paper establishes a spatial Durbin model to investigate the impact of market potential on urban green innovation efficiency, and discusses its mechanism and spatial spillover attenuation characteristics. The main results are as follows: (1) The market potential significantly improves the efficiency of urban green innovation, and the robustness test also supports this conclusion; (2) The paper analyzes the mechanism of market potential to improve the efficiency of urban green innovation, and uses the intermediary effect model to identify that the market potential can promote the efficiency of urban green innovation through the mechanisms of economic agglomeration, market competition and industrial structure upgrading; (3) There are obvious regional differences in the impact of market potential on urban green innovation efficiency, and the promotion effect shows a decreasing trend of “ east-central-west ”; (4) There is a spatial spillover effect of market potential on the efficiency of urban green innovation.The distance between cities within 650 km is a significant effective area of spatial spillover effect, and there is an obvious attenuation when it is more than 950 km. In order to further improve the efficiency of urban green innovation, this paper puts forward some policy suggestions from the aspects of deepening institutional reform, strengthening the function mechanism and breaking through the decline boundary of market potential to “ reshape space ”.
2023, Vol. 40 
