How Fintech Affects Urban Sustainable Development: Evidence from the Perspective of Urban Economic Resilience in China

Sustainability has become a core guiding principle for high-quality urban development. As a key dimension of urban resilience, economic resilience is of utmost importance. It directly relates to a city’s capacity to maintain stable operations and sustainable development when confronting shocks, serving as a crucial foundation for safeguarding economic health and public welfare. Through bolstering risk management, accelerating industrial upgrading, and enhancing the efficiency of resource allocation, financial technology (fintech) empowers urban economic resilience. This plays a pivotal role in accelerating the transition to new engines of national economic growth and promoting sustainable urban economic development. This paper selects panel data from 281 prefecture-level cities covering the period from 2009 to 2023 to examine the impact of fintech on urban economic resilience. It further examines the moderating role of industrial agglomeration in this relationship, analyzes heterogeneity in urban economic resilience, and investigates the spatial spillover effects of fintech on it. The results demonstrate that fintech significantly promotes the enhancement of urban economic resilience. This finding remains valid after multiple robustness tests and endogeneity treatments are conducted; the role of fintech in promoting urban economic resilience is more pronounced in cities with a higher degree of industrial agglomeration, and fintech can generate spatial spillover effects, leading to a marked improvement in the economic resilience of neighboring areas.