Coupling and Coordination between Digital Economy and Urban–Rural Integration in China

Abstract

The positive interaction between digital economy development and urban–rural relationship adjustment can both expand the contribution of technological factors and enhance the balance of urban–rural development. This paper aims to explore the trends and barriers to the coupled and coordinated development of the digital economy and urban–rural integration. This paper measures the degree of coupled coordination between the digital economy and urban–rural integration based on provincial panel data from 2013 to 2020 in China. Based on this, this paper investigates the characteristics and driving forces of the coupled coordination relationship through the chronological evolution method and geographically weighted regression. The results show that (1) the coupling relationship between the digital economy and urban–rural integration has improved substantially in Chinese provinces; (2) heterogeneity still exists at the provincial level; (3) this relationship is expected to be optimized over time; and (4) information construction, rational distribution, balanced growth, equalization of public services and digital-industry development does have a positive effect on the improvement of the coupled coordination relationship, and the popularity of the internet has a negative effect. Accordingly, this paper mainly draws the following conclusions. The coupling relationship between the digital economy and urban–rural integration in the Chinese provinces shows a tendency to be more coordinated. It is necessary to promote the development of the five positive drivers and to guide and regulate the negative drivers.