Does Resource Industry Dependence Undermine Urban Resilience? Evidence From China

Abstract

This study empirically investigates the causal relationship between resource industry dependence and urban resilience from three perspectives: ecological, economic, and social, contributing to the resource curse theory and the sustainable development of resource-dependent cities. We use the entropy method to establish an urban resilience index system to measure the resilience of 269 Chinese cities from 2000 to 2019, and construct a two-way fixed-effects model to test the impact of resource industry dependence on urban resilience. The results show that resource industry dependence impairs urban resilience, and this finding remains robust to the estimation using an instrumental variable approach. Moreover, mechanism tests show that resource industry dependence undermines urban resilience by inhibiting industrial structural upgrading and hindering green technological innovation. We further categorize urban resilience into ecological resilience, economic resilience, and social resilience, and find that resource industry dependence has a more significant negative impact on urban ecological resilience and social resilience than on economic resilience. Our investigations suggest that cities should develop strategies based on their unique endowments to reduce resource dependence, improve urban resilience by strengthening industrial systems and promoting innovation, and achieve sustainable economic development.