The impact of innovation-driven policies on urban resilience

How to enhance urban resilience (UR) through innovation is an emerging issue in urban governance. The National Innovative City Pilot Policy (NICPP) has become an important driving force to enhance UR and promote sustainable urban development. Examining the panel data of 280 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2020, this paper uses a time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) model to identify the impact of the NICPP on UR and its impact path and investigates the spatial effect of UR by constructing a spatial Durbin model (SDM). Benchmark regression results show that NICPP can significantly improve UR. The results of the moderating effect show that both industrial diversification and market demand play a positive moderating role in the relationship between NICPP and UR. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effect of NICPP on UR is greater in cities east of the Hu Huanyong line, with larger city sizes and higher administrative levels. The SDM test shows that NICPP has a positive spatial spillover effect on UR in the neighboring areas. This study not only enriches the empirical evidence of the microeconomic impacts of the NICPP but also puts forward novel insights and new starting points for the construction of resilient cities.