Rebirth amidst risk: can the digital economy break the urban resource curse? evidence from resource-based cities

Digital transformation reshapes global economic paradigms and offers a pathway for resource-dependent regions to transcend the “resource curse.” By leveraging panel data from 111 Chinese resource-based cities between 2011 and 2019, this study empirically examines whether the burgeoning digital economy facilitates departure from resource-dependent stagnation. First, our analysis validates the presence of a robust resource curse within the sample, and subsequently scrutinizes the moderating role of digital development. The results reveal that (1) the digital economy significantly and sustainably mitigates the resource-growth paradox. (2) This moderating influence exhibits pronounced heterogeneity, contingent on the city’s geographical location and the specific stage of resource exploitation. (3) The efficacy of digital interventions is nonlinear and varies across thresholds of digital maturity. These findings underscore the strategic importance of digital infrastructure in fostering economic resilience and provide critical policy insights for regions seeking to decouple their growth trajectories from finite natural resources.