Digital economy development boosts urban resilience—evidence from China

Abstract

AbstractFocusing on the impact of the digital economy on urban resilience is beneficial to the sustainable development of cities. This paper empirically examines the impact of digital economic development on urban resilience and its mechanisms by measuring urban resilience and the level of urban digital economy with the entropy-weighted TOPSIS method using the data of 252 Chinese cities from 2011 to 2020. The findings show that digital economic development effectively promotes urban resilience at the 1% significance level, and this conclusion remains valid after a series of endogeneity and robustness tests. The channel mechanism suggests that the development of the digital economy can improve urban resilience by optimizing urban distributional effects and promoting the upgrading of urban industrial structures. This paper discusses the nonlinear relationship between the two using the MMQR model and the threshold model. The results show that urban resilience development level is in a higher quartile of cities, and digital economy development has a greater impact on urban resilience improvement. Meanwhile, there are two threshold values for the nonlinear impact of the digital economy on urban resilience, which are 0.026 and 0.082, respectively. Further, the spatial effect between the two is also verified. From the perspective of heterogeneity analysis, the digital economy development of high-class cities, key city clusters, and cities in eastern and western regions has a greater effect on urban resilience. This study can provide ideas and inspiration for countries to enhance urban resilience and promote sustainable urban development through the development of the digital economy.