How Visa-Free Policies Fuel International Research Collaboration: Evidence from China

Visa regimes constitute significant institutional barriers to the cross-border mobility of researchers. Utilizing China's phased implementation of a unilateral visa-free policy since 2023 as a quasi-natural experiment, this study employs a staggered difference-in-differences design to assess the policy's effect on international scientific collaboration. Results indicate that the policy significantly increased the volume of Sino-foreign co-authored publications. The mechanism analysis indicates that this effect is primarily achieved by enhancing transportation accessibility and human mobility, which in turn facilitates cross-border research collaboration among scholars. Further evidence suggests that academic conferences partially attenuated the policy's impact, indicating a substitutive relationship across collaboration channels. Moreover, the effect was more pronounced for countries with greater geographical distance or lower research capacity. This study elucidates the mechanisms through which visa facilitation promotes international scientific collaboration and offers new insights into how institutional barriers shape research cooperation and knowledge production.