Analyzing the Spatial Pattern and Driving Factors of Urban Digital Economy: A Multiscale Perspective

The digital economy has recently emerged as a potent force for reorganizing resources and transforming the economic structure. Although the existence of the digital divide has been confirmed in various nations and regions, most existing research has only examined it at a single geographic scale, leaving out consideration of multiscale dynamics. To fill this gap, this work attempts to construct a multiscale dynamic analytic framework for the digital economy by combining the methods and models from urban geography and spatial statistics. First, the overall patterns that the digital economy presents are examined in the proposed framework. Additionally, the multiscale dynamics of the digital divide as well as the multiscale dynamics of the factors influencing the digital economy are investigated. Finally, we carried out an empirical analysis on 242 Chinese cities using the proposed framework, and the findings can aid in the government's creation of strategies for the growth of an urban digital economy, thereby reducing the digital divide.