Digital Empowerment and Urban Belonging: How the Digital Economy Shapes Migrants’ Settlement Intentions? Evidence from China

The digital economy is reshaping urban development and may contribute to more inclusive and sustainable cities. Using the 2016 and 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS), this study constructs a city-level digital economy index covering digital industrialization, industrial digitization, and digital infrastructure, and examines its effects on migrants’ settlement intentions. The results show that the digital economy significantly promotes migrants’ settlement intentions, with digital industrialization as the primary driver. The positive effect is more robust for long-term settlement intention, whereas its association with hukou transfer intention is less stable. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect is stronger among women and highly educated migrants, but weaker among migrants with rural hukou. It is also more pronounced in cities with lower ecological quality and varies across regions and city sizes. Mechanism analysis suggests that the digital economy promotes settlement intentions mainly through social integration and income enhancement, thereby supporting more stable and sustainable urban living by facilitating migrants’ long-term integration into host cities. Digital industrialization plays a stronger role in the social integration channel, whereas industrial digitization is more strongly linked to income enhancement. These findings suggest that digital development can contribute to inclusive and sustainable urbanization in the digital era by improving employment quality, narrowing the digital divide, strengthening migrants’ social integration, and promoting more differentiated urban governance.