Collaborative Innovation in China’s Green Innovation Consortia: Two-Layer Coupled Networks Evolutionary Game Analysis

Under the backdrop of the carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, fostering the profound integration of green innovation consortia is a critical pathway to overcoming barriers to industrial green innovation and realizing high-quality development in China. This paper constructs a two-layer coupled network evolutionary model comprising enterprises and public research institutes to investigate the collaboration mechanisms of green innovation. The study found that (1) the collaborative evolution process exhibits a “valley of death” phenomenon; (2) policy effects demonstrate cross-layer symmetric transmission; (3) high-intensity knowledge spillovers easily trigger a “free-riding” dilemma; and (4) imbalances in revenue distribution significantly affect collaborative innovation performance. This study provides theoretical support and practical implications for the formulation of industrial policies.