Research on the Development Level, Spatiotemporal Evolution Characteristics, and Sustainable Development Path of the Digital Business Environment

This paper aims to measure the development level and dynamic evolutionary characteristics of the digital business environment, and explore its sustainable development strategies, which would contribute to the sustainable development of the digital economy. This study employs ecosystem theory to construct evaluation indicators for the digital business environment. Utilizing panel data from 272 cities in China between 2011 and 2020, the study applies the entropy weight method to measure the development level of China’s digital business environment. It further examines the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and sustainable development strategy of the digital business environment using methods such as kernel density estimation, Markov chain analysis, Moran’s I index analysis, Dagum’s Gini coefficient calculation and decomposition, and fsQCA analysis. The results indicate that the digital business environment steadily increased during the study period. Furthermore, there has been a gradual acceleration in the upward trend since 2017, with a higher probability of transition from cities with lower levels of the digital business environment to neighboring cities with higher levels. Cities with higher development levels are experiencing an increasing gap compared to the average level. There is a significant spatial positive autocorrelation in the efficiency of the digital business environment among Chinese cities, exhibiting a distribution pattern of “high-high” and “low-low” in spatial terms. Dagum’s Gini coefficient reveals that the regional differences serve as the primary source of spatial distribution disparities in the digital business environment, and there are four configuration paths to promote a sustainable digital business environment. Moreover, our findings have implications for policy makers, such as increasing investment in digital infrastructure, leveraging the spatial spillover effects of regions with a high level of digital business environment development, and enhancing the diffusion mechanism for optimizing the digital business environment.