Climate Risk and Public Service Provision in Large Cities: The Moderating Role of Digital Governance

Against the backdrop of intensifying climate change and deepening digital governance, public service systems in large cities face increasingly severe and complex challenges. Based on multi-source heterogeneous data from large cities in China, this study empirically examines the relationship between climate risk and public service provision and its underlying mechanisms using two-way fixed effects models, mediation models, and threshold regression models. Findings indicate that, first, both physical and transition climate risks are significantly and negatively associated with public service provision. Second, the mediation analysis suggests that physical climate risk is linked to public service provision mainly through entrepreneurial vitality, whereas transition climate risk is linked to public service provision through knowledge spillovers and industrial upgrading. Third, this negative association is more pronounced in coastal cities and cities with larger population scales. Finally, open public data and AI-related development are associated with a partial attenuation of these negative relationships. Therefore, urban policymakers should closely monitor multiple climate-risk pathways, strengthen climate-adaptive governance with data resources and AI technologies, and incorporate differentiated climate vulnerabilities into land-use zoning, green infrastructure planning, and the spatial distribution of critical public services so as to enhance urban resilience.