Innovation capability, global cooperation, and sustainable development along the Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract Although the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the largest global platform for economic, social, and energy cooperation, there remains a question of how to effectively utilize its globalizing role to promote sustainable development among the countries along the route. Innovation capability is identified as the key to resolving sustainable development issue, because innovation capability has the potential to effectively reconcile the conflict between economic development and environmental conservation. Therefore, this study has opted to utilize a sample of 99 countries across the globe, comprising of 78 BRI countries and 21 non‐BRI countries. The DDD model has been employed to examine the impact of innovation capability on sustainable development in the BRI. The result shows that BRI can contribute to the achievement of green sustainable development. Innovation serves as an effective means to improve green sustainable development, which can be achieved through green technical progress and green technical efficiency. In addition, global cooperation has a significant moderating effect on this outcome, with the foreign direct investment and trade capability being the main moderators of economic global cooperation, while digital capability, infrastructure, and social exchange are the main moderators of social global cooperation. Finally, in the regional heterogeneity analysis, we find that the results of the role of the four continents are more consistent with the regression results of the total world sample, the difference being that the moderating role of global cooperation is not consistent across states.