Impact of China’s Digital Economy on Integrated Urban–Rural Development

Abstract

This paper measures the comprehensive level of the digital economy and integrated urban–rural development across Chinese provinces from 2013 to 2022. Using a two-way fixed effects model, it explores the nonlinear relationship, regional heterogeneity, and underlying causes of how the digital economy empowers integrated urban–rural development. The study finds that: (1) The digital economy promotes integrated urban–rural development, with a quadratic polynomial regression model and threshold regressive model revealing an inverted U-shaped relationship. The turning point has not yet been reached, and the promoting relationship shows a diminishing marginal trend. (2) In terms of sub-dimensions, the strengths of the promoting effect are ranked as follows: digital infrastructure construction, industrial digitization, and digital industrialization. (3) Regionally, the digital economy’s promoting effect on integrated urban–rural development is strongest in Central China, followed by Eastern China, and weakest in Western China. The innovation and contribution of this paper lie in discovering the nonlinear impact of the digital economy on China’s integrated urban–rural development, analyzing its intrinsic driving forces and regional differences, and providing valuable references for implementing regionally differentiated development policies for the digital economy and integrated urban–rural development in various regions of China.