Can E-commerce Cities Construction Promote Enterprise Digital Transformation？
——Evidence from a Quasi-natural Experiment Based on National E-commerce Demonstration Cities
HUA Ying and LIANG Zhi-hao
（School of Information Technology and Management，University of International Business and Economics，
Beijing 100029，China）
Abstract：In the era of the digital economy，digital transformation stands as the core driving force for enterprises to enhance their competitiveness. Moreover，it serves as a powerful engine propelling the high-quality development of economy and society. Existing studies have shown the promoting effect of policies and institutions on enterprise digital transformation. However ，there is a noticeable research gap in policies associated with e- commerce ，which constitutes the core business form in the digital economy. Based on the resource orchestration theory，the authors focus on the National E- commerce Demonstration Cities （NEDC）policy，carry out a quasi-natural experiment，analyze the panel data spanning from 2007 to 2021 for listed companies by using the multi- phase Differences- in- Differences（DID）model，and empirically test the impact effect of NEDC on enterprises’digital transformation and its mechanism. The results show that the NEDC policy can significantly promote the digital transformation of local enterprises through two pathways of the digital infrastructures empowerment and talents empowerment effect. Besides，the promoting effect is more significant for enterprises in eastern cities ，technology-intensive industries and with smaller size. Therefore，the government departments should，first，pay more attention to e-commerce cities construction to fully release the promoting effect on enterprise digital transformation ；second，they should strengthen the construction of regional digital environment，improve and optimize digital infrastructures，and introduce and cultivate more talents ；and third，they should formulate and implement different policies according to the characteristics of cities ，such as encouraging eastern cities to increase investment in e- commerce cities construction based on their resource endowment ，giving technology- intensive industries more preferential resources，and encouraging small and medium-sized enterprises to make full use of external digital resources to break the barriers and achieve the "curve overtaking" of enterprise digital transformation.
Key words：National E- commerce Demonstration Cities ；enterprise digital transformation ；digital economy；resource or⁃ chestration