From Digital Marketplace to Economic Resilience: Evidence from China’s National E-Commerce Demonstration Cities

Leveraging panel data of 281 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2022, this study frames the designation of National E-commerce Demonstration Cities (NEDC) as a quasi-natural experiment, aiming to investigate the impact of e-commerce policies on urban economic resilience (UER). We employ a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model, with propensity score matching-DID (PSM-DID) and Double Machine Learning (DML) as robustness checks to ensure result reliability.The findings reveal that the policy significantly enhances UER, with an average effect of approximately 8.8%, reaching its peak in the third year after implementation. Mechanism analysis indicates that the policy operates through three key channels: improving green total factor productivity(GTFP), strengthening regional innovation capacity (RIC), and promoting industrial structure upgrading(ISU). Heterogeneity analysis further shows that the policy’s positive effects are more prominent in non-resource-based cities (coefficient = 0.073, p < 0.05) and non-national hub cities (coefficient = 0.096, p < 0.01). In contrast, resource-based cities rely more on fiscal support and industrial specialization, while national hub cities experience diminishing marginal returns due to their well-developed foundations. This study fills an empirical gap and provides evidence for differentiated approaches to digital governance.