Key Drivers of Urban Digital Economy Sustainable Development: The China Case

Digitalisation is a modern social and economic reality. The search for efficient pathways to move towards high-quality digital communities’ sustainable development constitutes the scope of current urban research worldwide. Given the need to move towards sustainable urban digitalisation, investigation of its critical influencing factors deserves special attention. However, quantitative empirical studies that avoid subjective judgement on the drivers of sustainable urban digitalisation are lacking. The purpose of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by outlining and quantifying the key factors affecting the sustainable development of the urban digital economy through entropy-TOPSIS modelling. The study takes China’s provinces and cities as an example due to China’s success in digital economy development. It is proposed to use the complex four-dimensional (scientific and technological innovation, economic growth, social development, information infrastructure) system involving 16 sub-indices to measure urban digital economy sustainability. Applying data from 31 Chinese provinces and cities for 2016-2019 and the entropy-TOPSIS model, the development of the technological innovations was found to be the most impacting factor on the urban digital economy sustainability path. The R&D staff engagement and expenditures, goods export and import, and e-commerce sales fuel the urban digital economy sustainability the most, while the number of students, public financial expenditures, and unemployment are the least significant. Results show that the urban digital economy is more a business-driven process than pushed by authorities. The gap between Chinese regions’ digital economy development was identified. This could be explained by the prevalence of conventional industries in several areas and the low level of their digitalisation and indicates the need to enhance interregional cooperation and partnership to promote sustainable development of the country under the digital economy paradigm. Despite China’s context, this research contributes to further science and policy development in this field globally, covering the role of talents, innovations, business R&D investments, interregional cooperation, and multiscale partnership in the promotion of urban digitalisation conducive to sustainability ideas