The Impact of the Digital Economy on Urban Ecosystem Resilience in the Yellow River Basin

The digital economy is key to ecological security in the Yellow River Basin and to harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. This study uses data from 80 cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2010 to 2022 to examine how the digital economy affects urban ecological resilience. It uses three models to do this. The conclusion that the development of digital economy in the Yellow River Basin can significantly promote the enhancement of urban ecological environment resilience still holds after the robustness tests of phased regression, variable substitution and the introduction of instrumental variables. There is regional heterogeneity in the impact of digital economy on urban ecosystem resilience, showing the unbalanced spatial characteristics that the middle reaches are the highest, the upper reaches are the second highest, and the lower reaches are the lowest. The digital economy was shown to influence ecological resilience through a “double fixed-effects model” and a mediation effect model, via two intermediary pathways: “digital economy development → industrial structure upgrading → ecological resilience enhancement” and “digital economy development → resource allocation improvement → ecological resilience enhancement”. The digital economy was shown to transform and upgrade industrial structures and optimize capital and labor allocation, strengthening the ecological resilience of cities in the Yellow River Basin.