ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Urban Science
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Resilience in Complex Systems: Transdisciplinary and Systems Approaches to Sustainable Infrastructure and Urban DevelopmentView all 8 articles
Research on the Impact of Government Digital Infrastructure on Urban Economic Resilience: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China
- 2Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China
- 3Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, China
- 4East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China
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Against the backdrop of the rapid development of the digital economy, information infrastructure has become a key support for enhancing the economic resilience of regions. Taking the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration as an example, this paper uses panel data from 27 cities from 2013 to 2022 and the progressive difference-in-differences (DID) model to empirically examine the impact of the "Broadband China" policy on urban economic resilience. The results show that the policy significantly enhances the economic resilience of cities, with a robust positive effect. Mechanism analysis reveals that the policy indirectly boosts economic resilience through two channels: increasing government scientific spending and promoting the development of digital finance, demonstrating a logic of "resource optimization - innovation-driven - financial empowerment". Heterogeneity tests indicate that the policy effect is more pronounced in large cities and those with a favorable business environment. Robustness tests (parallel trends, placebo, PSM-DID, etc.) further validate the reliability of the conclusion. The study shows that the construction of digital infrastructure not only enhances the resilience, recovery, and evolution capabilities of cities but also promotes high-quality economic development through informatization and innovation. The findings of this paper provide empirical evidence for improving government science and technology policies and promoting regional digital transformation.
Keywords: Broadband China, Difference-in-differences model, Digital infrastructure, economic resilience, Yangtze River delta urban agglomeration
Received: 21 Oct 2025; Accepted: 16 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Liu, Zhang, Xu and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xiansheng Chen
Lin Liu
Yaping Zhang
Longshun Xu
Changxu Zheng
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