Abstract: With the development of economy stepping into the new normal, the industrial parks and zones in China that have increasingly serious trend of involution set in the initial system need urgently transformation and upgrading. Compared with the overall country and the industrial zones in the eastern region, the underdeveloped areas have their own characteristics and dilemmas, therefore, the factors influencing the transformation and upgrading are also different. By making use of the panel data of 89 industrial parks in 11 prefecture-level cities in underdeveloped Jiangxi province during the period of 2011─2015, this paper constructs an evaluation index system for the transformation and upgrading of the industrial parks under the new normal from five aspects, so as to try to explore the factors influencing the transformation and upgrading of the industrial parks in underdeveloped regions under the new economic normal. The empirical results show that such factors as external investment, production service level, financial deepening, location advantages and infrastructure constructions are of great significance to the transformation and upgrading of industrial parks; while such factors as the urbanization separating the cities from the industry, the monopoly of state-owned enterprises, excessive government intervention and the suppression of the marketization can hinder the pace of transformation and upgrading of industrial parks.

Key words: industrial parks; transformation and upgrading; underdeveloped areas; principal component analysis