Purpose

With the accelerated technological advancement, innovation has become a critical factor, which affects the core competitiveness of a company. However, studies about the relationship between internal stock option mechanisms and innovation productivity remain limited. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the impact of stock options and their elements design on innovation output from an internal mechanism perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a sample of 302 stock option incentive plans announced and implemented between 2006 and 2016, this study uses the propensity score matching and difference-in-difference model to find out whether the implementation of stock options improves the innovation outputs of enterprises.

Findings

Based on the statistical analysis, it is concluded that: stock options can stimulate corporate innovation; a stock option may drive innovation outputs through two ways, performance-based incentives and risk-taking incentives, with the latter one playing a more dominant role and the risk-taking incentives of stock options, could be optimised when the non-executives granting proportion is larger, the granting range is limited, the incentive period is longer, the exercisable proportion is increasing, the price-to-strike ratio is lower and relatively loose performance assessment criteria are applied.

Originality/value

The conclusion reached in the study may provide valuable information to listed firms in designing and implementing the stock option plans.

中文翻译：

---

股票期权、合同要素设计与企业创新产出——基于风险承担和绩效激励的分析

目的

随着科技进步的加速，创新成为影响企业核心竞争力的关键因素。然而，关于内部股票期权机制与创新生产力之间关系的研究仍然有限。因此，本文旨在从内部机制的角度考察股票期权及其要素设计对创新产出的影响。

设计/方法/方法

本研究以2006年至2016年间公布并实施的302份股票期权激励计划为样本，采用倾向得分匹配和差异中的差异模型研究股票期权的实施是否提高了企业的创新产出。

发现

通过统计分析得出结论：股票期权可以激发企业创新；股票期权可以通过绩效激励和风险承担激励两种方式驱动创新产出，后者发挥更大的作用，股票期权的风险承担激励可以在非执行董事授予比例时得到优化较大，授予范围有限，激励期较长，可行使比例增加，行权价格较低，采用相对宽松的绩效考核标准。

原创性/价值

研究得出的结论可为上市公司股票期权计划的设计和实施提供有价值的信息。