Does Digital Industrial Agglomeration Enhance Urban Ecological Resilience? Evidence from Chinese Cities

As an important industrial organizational form in the era of the digital economy, digital industry agglomeration exerts a profound impact on urban ecological resilience. Using panel data of 281 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2021, this study measures the level of digital industry agglomeration by means of the location entropy method, and constructs an urban ecological resilience evaluation system based on the “Pressure-State-Response (PSR)” model. It systematically examines the impact effects and action mechanisms of digital industry agglomeration on urban ecological resilience. The results show that: (1) The spatio-temporal evolution of the two presents a gradient pattern of “eastern leadership and central-western catch-up”, and their spatial correlation deepens over time, with the synergy maturity in the eastern region being significantly higher than that in the central and western regions. (2) Digital industry agglomeration significantly promotes the improvement in urban ecological resilience, and this conclusion remains valid after endogeneity treatment and robustness tests. (3) The promotional effect is more prominent in central cities, coastal cities, and key environmental protection cities, whose advantages stem from digital infrastructure and innovation endowments, industrial synergy and an open environment, and the adaptability of green technologies under strict environmental regulations, respectively. (4) Digital industry agglomeration empowers ecological resilience by driving green innovation and improving the efficiency of land resource allocation, while the construction of digital infrastructure plays a positive regulatory role.