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<p>As an important pillar of digital economy development, digital infrastructure (DI) is profoundly reshaping urban green transformation and sustainable development. Urban ecological resilience (UER) is an important indicator for evaluating the capacity of urban ecosystems to withstand disturbances, adapt to change, and sustain evolutionary development. It is also a key dimension for assessing the long-term sustainability of cities. Although existing studies have extensively examined the effects of DI on economic growth, carbon reduction, and green development, direct empirical evidence on whether and how DI enhances UER remains limited. To address this gap, this study treats the Broadband China Strategy (BCS) as a quasi-natural experiment and uses panel data for 275 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2023 to employ a multi-period difference-in-differences model. It systematically examines the impact of DI on UER and its underlying mechanisms. The results show that, first, DI significantly enhances UER. The BCS pilot policy increases the UER index by 0.0037 on average, equivalent to an improvement of about 1.65% relative to the sample mean, and this finding remains robust across a series of robustness tests. Second, the mechanism analysis indicates that DI mainly enhances UER through three channels: promoting green technological innovation, facilitating industrial structure upgrading, and strengthening environmental regulation intensity. Third, the heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of DI is mainly concentrated in the eastern and central regions, resource-based cities, and small- and medium-sized cities. These findings suggest that future efforts should continue to advance DI development while placing greater emphasis on its coordinated progress with the cultivation of green technological innovation, the optimization of industrial structure, and the improvement of environmental governance capacity. Differentiated strategies should also be adopted in accordance with regional conditions, resource endowments, and city characteristics so as to more effectively strengthen UER and support the green and low-carbon transformation of cities.</p>

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Can digital infrastructure improve urban ecological resilience? Evidence from the “Broadband China” strategy

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月13日

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  • Xinchi Jia,
  • Xiuli Liu,
  • Ke Lyu,
  • Guofeng Wang,
  • Jun Shen,
  • QinQin Shi

摘要

As an important pillar of digital economy development, digital infrastructure (DI) is profoundly reshaping urban green transformation and sustainable development. Urban ecological resilience (UER) is an important indicator for evaluating the capacity of urban ecosystems to withstand disturbances, adapt to change, and sustain evolutionary development. It is also a key dimension for assessing the long-term sustainability of cities. Although existing studies have extensively examined the effects of DI on economic growth, carbon reduction, and green development, direct empirical evidence on whether and how DI enhances UER remains limited. To address this gap, this study treats the Broadband China Strategy (BCS) as a quasi-natural experiment and uses panel data for 275 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2023 to employ a multi-period difference-in-differences model. It systematically examines the impact of DI on UER and its underlying mechanisms. The results show that, first, DI significantly enhances UER. The BCS pilot policy increases the UER index by 0.0037 on average, equivalent to an improvement of about 1.65% relative to the sample mean, and this finding remains robust across a series of robustness tests. Second, the mechanism analysis indicates that DI mainly enhances UER through three channels: promoting green technological innovation, facilitating industrial structure upgrading, and strengthening environmental regulation intensity. Third, the heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of DI is mainly concentrated in the eastern and central regions, resource-based cities, and small- and medium-sized cities. These findings suggest that future efforts should continue to advance DI development while placing greater emphasis on its coordinated progress with the cultivation of green technological innovation, the optimization of industrial structure, and the improvement of environmental governance capacity. Differentiated strategies should also be adopted in accordance with regional conditions, resource endowments, and city characteristics so as to more effectively strengthen UER and support the green and low-carbon transformation of cities.