The digital innovation ecosystem is constantly breaking the boundaries of traditional innovation with the help of digital technology and platform enabling mechanisms, and has become an accelerator for digital economic growth and the transformation from old to new growth drivers. The resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem not only emphasizes the stability and adaptability of the main subjects, elements, environment, structure and function in digital innovation when subjected to external shocks and pressures, but also includes the evolutionary ability of upgrading to a system with better digital innovation efficiency. How should the resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem be measured? What antecedent conditions constitute the necessary conditions for the strong/weak resilience of digital innovation ecosystem? What antecedent configurations constitute sufficient conditions for the strong/weak resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem? Is there a significant spatio-temporal effect of antecedent configuration? These problems necessitate further scholarly investigation and in-depth discourse.
To explore the above issues, this research establishes an indicator system for regional digital innovation ecosystem resilience, comprising subsystems of subject diversity, element fluidity, environmental buffering, structural networking, and functional evolvement. Employing the "Wuli-Shili-Renli" (WSR) framework and dynamic QCA method, this research utilizes panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2022 to explore the configurational paths of digital industry agglomeration, industrial diversification, innovation protection system, market institution, government innovation preference, and enterprise technological innovation level on enhancing the resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem.
The research reveals several findings. Firstly, market institution is a necessary condition for strong resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem, while other factors, although not necessary over time, are essential for certain provinces in terms of spatial dimension. Secondly, there are four configurational paths that contribute to robust resilience. These can be classified into two types: the WSR collaborative type and the SR cooperative type. In the WSR collaborative path, the "Wuli" condition of digital industry agglomeration, linked with other "Shili" and "Renli" conditions,is the keys to the resilient development of regional digital innovation ecosystem. In the SR cooperative path, "Shili" and "Renli" conditions play a synergistic role in the resilient development. These two types indicate that in the digital economy, governments and enterprises, as the "clever hands" in constructing resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem, can achieve autonomous upgrading in a "resource-rich" scenario through digital industry agglomeration, or rely on the spillover effects of superior provincial digital industries to realize dependent upgrading in a "resource-scarce" predicament. Thirdly, there are four weak resilience paths, which can be categorized as hindrance type and deficiency type. The hindrance type emphasizes that in the absence of support from digital industry agglomeration and other "Shili" and "Renli" conditions, industrial diversification has posed a challenge to the resilience development of digital innovation ecosystem. The deficiency type is characterized by the lack of core and peripheral conditions in the "Wuli", "Shili", and "Renli" aspects during the resilient development of regional digital innovation ecosystem, representing a scenario where resources, technological capabilities, and entities are all absent. Fourthly, the consistency adjustment distances within and between groups are less than 0.2, indicating that the configurations do not exhibit significant temporal or case effects. However, by comparing the average coverage of each configuration across the four regions, there are certain commonalities and differences in configurational preferences among regions.
This study not only expands the comprehensive evaluation system of regional digital innovation ecosystem resilience, but also enriches the exploration of complex antecedent conditions of resilience formation of regional digital innovation ecosystem. At the same time, by combining WSR methodology and dynamic QCA method, the research extends the application boundary of WSR methodology and enriches the theoretical research on the resilience of digital innovation ecosystem in the context of China. In addition, dynamic QCA method breaks through the "time blind zone" problem of static data,and explores the antecedent configurations and evolutionary laws of digital innovation ecosystem resilience from the perspective of spatio-temporal dual dimension. Finally, the research conclusions provide a valuable path reference for the resilient development of regional digital innovation ecosystem, and contribute new insights and theoretical support for the high-quality development of digital economy.