Does Innovative City Policy Enhance Urban Resilience? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in China
Against the backdrop of increasingly complex urban risks, enhancing urban resilience through effective policy tools has become an important issue in urban governance. Taking the national Innovative City Pilot Program as a quasi-natural experiment, this study uses panel data from 287 prefecture-level and higher cities in China from 2011 to 2021 and employs a multi-period difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of innovative city policies on urban resilience. The results show that innovative city policies significantly enhance urban resilience, and this conclusion remains robust after parallel trends tests, placebo tests, and robustness checks. Further analysis indicates that digital infrastructure, urban innovation capacity, and fiscal expenditure on science and technology positively moderate the relationship between innovative city policies and urban resilience. These findings suggest that innovative city policies not only promote technological innovation and economic development, but also serve as important governance tools for improving cities’ shock resistance, adaptability, and recovery capacity. This study enriches the research on the policy determinants of urban resilience and provides empirical evidence for promoting the coordinated development of innovation-driven growth and resilient city construction.