Road to Resilient Cities: The Power of Education Investment from China’s Cities

Educational investment is important for resilient city shaping. Based on the perspective of education resource input, this paper empirically examines the effect and mechanism of urban education investment on urban resilience construction with a sample of 280 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2023. The study finds that urban education investment can significantly promote urban resilience governance. In terms of the effect mechanism, urban education investment mainly enhances urban resilience through two paths: science and technology innovation and industry upgrading. The heterogeneity test reveals that the differences in economic level, administrative level, education input preferences, and geographic location of cities lead to the heterogeneous performance of the incentive effect of education investment on resilience shaping. Based on this, policy recommendations are put forward in terms of strengthening the stability and continuity of urban education investment; improving the level of innovation and industrial structure; and emphasizing the problem of unbalanced education development.