Ecological resilience is an important tool for cities in deal with environmental change and achieving sustainable development. The National People’s Congress, 14th Five-Year Plan and long-term targets for 2035 of China released in March 2021, aim to strengthen ecological environmental awareness, build resilient cities, and promote new urban construction, all while aiming to build a digital China and accelerate digitization development. As the ability of cities to restore and protect its ecosystem and promote sustainable development in response to environmental changes(Davidson et al., 2019), ecological resilience is a new entry point for the construction of new urbanization. However, the rough development pattern of high energy consumption and high emissions, has been utilized by resource-based cities for a long time, leading to excessive carbon emissions and a persistent economic downturn. Therefore there is still much to be done in terms of building urbanism that is focused on ecological restoration. Digital economy, which has a positive effect on optimizing the industrial structure, improving the utilization rate of resources, and promoting the evolution of ecological civilization(Yuan et al., 2022), may inspire fresh approaches to enhancing ecological resilience of resource-based cities. Additionally, it supports high-quality urban development(Wu et al., 2020) and strengthen urban ecological resilience while promoting urban sustainability(Khan et al., 2021),.
Resilience originates from physics, which describes the ability of a system to withstand, adapt to and rapidly recover from external shocks(Rutter, 1993). The study of resilience has expanded from ecology to social(keck and Sakdapolrak, 2013), economic(Simmie and Martin, 2010) and other fields Since Holling introduced it into ecology in 1973(Holling, 1973). It has also been applied to urban ecosystems(Ribeiro and Pena Jardim Gonçalves, 2019). The concept of ecological resilience has formed a preliminary consensus in academia, which refers to the ability of the urban environment to self-organize and coordinate, to adapt and withstand stress in response to dangers (Dakos and Kéfi, 2022), and to recover from disasters(Gunderson, 2000). In terms of ecological resilience measurement and influencing factors, scholars evaluate ecological resilience of the Pearl River Delta region(Wang et al., 2022), Nepal(Zhang et al., 2020), Ecuador(Ruiz-Ballesteros, 2011) and other regions, as well as its spatial-temporal evolution patterns, primarily using the extreme entropy weight method, landscape ecological pattern method, factor evaluation method, and principal component analysis method. Additionally, some scholars simulate the factors using SWMM and ENVI-met to ascertain the extent to which each factor affects ecological resilience. Ecological resilience is essentially the ability to adapt to and recover from shocks, it focuses on both the construction of new urbanization and ecological civilization. The short-board effect has the potential to prevent ignoring any link(Mehryar et al., 2022).
A robust economic structure is required for the development of ecological resilience. The digital economy, which is controlled by data resources, promotes the intensification of production mode and the online transformation of lifestyle, improves energy efficiency, and lowers SO2 and PM2.5 emissions by releasing the driving force of innovation(Sui and Rejeski, 2002). In terms of intensification of production mode, digital economy stimulates green development by optimizing the traditional financial structure and exerting the catfish effect(Li et al., 2021a). In terms of the online transformation of lifestyle, digital economy, which relies on the growth of smart devices, breaks through the constraints of physical distance, reduces service costs and closes the ecological gap(Song et al., 2022). Overall, digital economy can improve the environment, so whether ecological resilience of resource-based cities has been enhanced as a result of the Chinese sustainable development strategy of resource-based cities? Can digital economy effectively improve ecological resilience? What causes this? Is there geographic and growth-stage heterogeneity in this link? Answering the above questions is not only helpful to expound on the evolution characteristics of ecological resilience but also to identify the internal relationship between digital economy and ecological resilience to provide policy basis for the sustainable development of resource-based cities.
Therefore, this paper uses the panel data of resource-based cities from 2011 to 2020 to measure ecological resilience with the entropy weight TOPSIS method, explores the direct effect and spatial spillover effect of digital economy on ecological resilience of resource-based cities, deconstructs the mechanism of the effect of digital economy on ecological resilience of resource-based cities from the perspective of technological innovation, and discusses the heterogeneity of technological innovation mechanism in resource-based cities of different geography and growth cycles. The contributions of this paper lie in: First, this paper analyzes the spatial structure changes of ecological resilience of resource-based cities and summarizes its spatial-temporal evolution characteristics. Second, based on the new economic geography theory, this paper introduces the SDM model to examine the influencing factors of ecological resilience and to provide policy basis for sustainable development. Third, this paper incorporates technological innovation into the analysis system of digital economy and ecological resilience of resource-based cities to uncover the black box of the mechanism.
The remainder of this paper is arranged as follows: Section 2 presents the related literature review and research hypotheses. Section 3 introduces methods. Section 4 discusses the empirical results. The last section concludes and offers policy suggestions.
Literature review and research hypotheses
In resource-based cities, continuous industries development is slow, the comprehensive resource utilization rate is poor, the problem of green deficiency is still serious, the contradiction between economic growth and environmental protection is still prominent, and ecological resilience is weakened. Digital economy is an economic model that uses digital information and knowledge to quickly optimize resource allocation and achieve superior economic development. Digital economy has gradually become the main driving force of China's national economic development and has played a positive role in enhancing ecological resilience. On the one hand, the development of digital economy makes it easier to obtain and analyze water resources, the atmospheric, noise and other relevant data affecting ecology in real-time, and easier to simulate the effects of ecological environment governance, improving the level of ecological management and control and reducing haze pollution(Li et al., 2021b). It is also convenient to take reasonable measures to improve ecological resilience in the event of unfavorable environmental conditions. On the other hand, digital economy relied on the development of information technologies like "cloud computing" and "artificial intelligence", uses wider and faster communication channels to achieve a more effective knowledge diffusion effect, which significantly improves the efficiency of knowledge dissemination(Tan et al., 2017). And it further encourages the transformation of social development quality and efficiency by increasing the stock of knowledge in society(Pan et al., 2022), which constantly modifies the traditional production mode and accelerates the intensive transformation of production mode to improve ecological resilience ultimately(Gay et al., 2005). From the spatial dimension, digital economy based on digital technology can overcome the geographical location limitation and realize cross-regional mobility(Su et al., 2021). The closer the geographical location, the higher the efficiency of factor mobility. Therefore, there is some correlation in the economic development of the neighboring cities. This leads to the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1
Digital economy not only improves ecological resilience of local cities but also has a spatial spillover effect on ecological resilience of neighboring cities.
Digital economy is conducive to increasing the stock of social knowledge, and knowledge agglomeration is the key to technological innovation(Nelson, 2018), which helps to improve the efficiency of information integration of enterprises(Guo et al., 2021), driving them to create new goods and promote technological innovation. Technological innovation is not only conducive to economic construction but also brings beneficial environmental effects(Danish and Ulucak, 2021), resulting in energy saving and emission reduction. First, while improving production efficiency, technological innovation promotes the use of clean energy and optimizes the input-output ratio, which means that there are fewer undesirable outputs under the same scale of energy input, thereby it can reduce pollutant emissions and promote green and efficient urban management(Cheng et al., 2021). Second, technological innovation promotes green production and manufacturing through the agglomeration of talents and capital, improving systems in internal control, management, and technology, and boosting quality and productivity(Carraro and Siniscaico, 1994). Therefore, enterprises can achieve sustainable development and strengthen ecological resilience. In addition, resource-based cities have lower resource utilization rates and more pollution-intensive enterprises. In the case of environmental policy uncertainty, pollution-intensive enterprises will try to seize the opportunity to raise investment to promote technological innovation(Chen and Lei, 2018), alleviate environmental pollution and enhance ecological resilience. This leads to the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 2
Digital economy strengthens ecological resilience of resource-based cities through technological innovation.
Resource-based cities are widely dispersed, the cities in different geographical locations have differences in economic growth, heating habits, and lifestyle. Economic development and lifestyle are closely related to ecological resilience(Zhang et al., 2021). Due to climate differences, the heating behavior of the northern and southern regions may have a heterogeneous impact on ecological resilience, and the southern region relies on the integrated development of capital and innovation elements, light industry and service industry account for a large proportion, with little impact on ecological resilience(Zhang et al., 2022b). The traditional industries such as coal and steel in the northern region have a high proportion, which has a significant impact on ecological resilience. This leads to the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 3
The mediating effect of technological innovation has geographic heterogeneity.
Resource-based cities experience varied economic growth, technological innovation, environmental regulation, and policy guidelines at different stages of resource development, resulting in quite difference in the development stages and problems(Yan et al., 2019). Resource-based cities in the mature stage have stable resource development with mature resource development mechanisms, higher economic levels, and a greater tendency to technological innovation. Resource-based cities in the growing and regenerating stage are in the transitional stage of resource development, their economic development momentum is sufficient(Meng et al., 2021), the mobility of factors is weak, and ecological resilience is in the recovery stage. The economic development of resource-based cities in the declining stage is lagging(Fan and Zhang, 2021), energy is exhausted, technological innovation concepts are not in-depth, and ecological resilience is hampered. This leads to the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 4
The mediating effect of technological innovation exists growth-stage heterogeneity.