摘 要：The effect of audit-based evaluation, which is characterized by standardized quality control, on academics' creative behaviors is ambiguous in the existing literature. Based on survey data collected from 509 academics among 60 research institutes in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, this paper applies multi-level regression analysis and empirically investigates the effect of audit-based evaluation. The main findings are: Audit-based evaluation promotes creative behavior at a low level, but after exceeding a certain threshold, it exhibits a depressing effect. Such an inverse U-shaped effect is weakened and the turning point shifts to the right by increased guanxi practice. Moreover, academics at the fringe of guanxi networks, females or juniors, benefit more from audit-based evaluation. These findings unveil the mechanism through which research evaluation affects creative behavior in heterogeneous groups among academics, and provide policy-related implications to research evaluation in both China and the world.
关键词：Research evaluation；Guanxi practice；Heterogeneous effect；Public research institutes；Multi-level modeling
【本文第一作者为公海gh555000aa线路检测中心特聘副研究员。】
