Can the cumulative effect of technological resources promote green technology collaborative innovation in resource-based regions?

Resource-based regions are encountering increasingly severe challenges in their green transformation and development. Urgent action is required from innovation entities to achieve more sustainable green technology innovation through Green Technology Collaborative Innovation (GTCI). To enhance the driving mechanism of GTCI, this study categorizes technological resources into tangible and intangible categories and examines their cumulative effects on GTCI from the perspective of innovation entities. Using a network evolution perspective, this research builds multi-stage GTCI networks by utilizing green joint invention authorized patent data from 2000 to 2020, and empirically examines them using exponential random graph models. The study finds that the cumulative effect of intangible resources of technology can promote GTCI in resource-based areas, but it needs a certain period of quantitative change to trigger the qualitative change of the cumulative effect; the cumulative effect of technology tangible resources does not promote GTCI in resource-based regions and inhibits GTCI in some stages of development. This study contributes to the advancement of the resource-based view theory and broadens the research scope of the GTCI network. It also facilitates the establishment of a market-oriented green technology innovation system with enterprises as the primary focus, thereby promoting the optimized development of GTCI in resource-based regions.