Repel or attract? Effects of urban digital infrastructure on labor migration: Evidence from urban China

Abstract

As a key feature of digital economy, digital infrastructure plays a prominent role in influencing labor migration across regions. To examine the impact of urban digital infrastructure development on labor migration in China, we first propose the theoretical mechanism of urban digital infrastructure affecting labor migration. Using the conditional logit model, we further analyze the impact based on the data of 165,866 individual data from 2013 to 2018 and the data of 240 prefecture-level cities in China. Empirical results indicate that urban digital infrastructure development has a significant inverted U-shaped effect on labor migration. The individual heterogeneity of the inverted U-shaped effect is significant in the labor migrants. Urban digital infrastructure development is more attractive to labor migrants with low education levels, labor migrants with the rural hukou, as well as female and new-generation individuals. Further research shows that the mechanisms that the inverted U-shaped effect depends on the comprehensive effects of mediating effects including the employment creation, the productivity, the employment substitution, and moderating effects as employment quality. Our findings are helpful to guide the orderly labor migration in the context of the accelerated development of digital infrastructure.