The impact and mechanism of digital finance on urban economic resilience

Enhancing the resilience of urban economy is an important way to cope with external shocks and promote high-quality development of urban economy. Based on panel data of 280 cities in China from 2011 to 2022, this paper empirically explores the impact and mechanism of digital finance on urban economic resilience through a two-way fixed effects model, mediating effect model, and moderating effect model. The results show that digital finance has a significant positive impact on urban economic resilience, with a more pronounced promoting effect in the central and eastern regions and areas with high levels of economic resilience. Mechanism testing reveals that digital finance indirectly affects the improvement of urban economic resilience through technological innovation. Moreover, we find that the level of human capital plays a positive moderating role in the process of digital finance enhancing urban economic resilience. It not only enhances the direct effects of digital finance, but also plays a positive moderating role in the indirect effects of technological innovation on urban economic resilience. Based on this, we propose targeted countermeasures and suggestions. • This paper uses two-way fixed effects, mediating, and moderating effect models to analyze how digital finance impacts urban economic resilience. • This paper finds that digital finance development notably boosts urban economic resilience, with a more prominent effect in central/eastern regions and areas with high resilience. • This paper reveals that technological innovation plays a partial mediating role between digital finance and urban economic resilience. • This paper indicates that human capital positively moderates digital finance’ s role in enhancing urban economic resilience and also strengthens technological innovation’ s mediating effect.