Abstract: Under the background that the current economy has entered a “new normal status”, the implementation of China’s innovation-driven development strategy is related to transformation of economic development pattern and adjustment of economic structure In order to clarify internal determinants of the innovation-driven development, an empirical test is conducted on the effect of institutional factors on innovation-driven economic development in the region based on Chinese provincial panel data model The empirical results show that legal systems, as institutional factors, positively influence innovation-driven development level of the regional economy; even if various influencing factors are controlled on the innovation-driven economic development, conclusions mentioned above are still set up; unanimous conclusions are obtained by various robustness tests Conclusions have important theoretical and policy implications for the enterprises’ innovation incentive behaviors

Key words: innovation-driven, institutional environment, property protection, entrepreneur