Abstract

Digital public administration may strengthen firms’ capacity to withstand disruption, but access to electronic services does not ensure that enterprises can convert institutional support into operational resilience. This study examines that relationship using Chinese A-share listed companies observed from 2014 to 2023. Participation in the National Pilot Policy of Information Benefiting the People, with 2018 treated as the intervention date, provides the policy setting for a difference-in-differences analysis. Enterprise resilience combines revenue growth, stock-return volatility, and profit recovery, while city-level digital finance represents a potential transmission channel. The reported estimates associate digital governance with stronger average resilience across baseline, alternative-outcome, matching, and instrumental variable specifications. Digital finance follows a pattern consistent with partial mediation: governance predicts financial development, and the governance coefficient declines after finance enters the resilience equation. Negative interactions with firm size and operating cash flow suggest greater marginal benefits among enterprises with fewer internal resources. These average relationships conceal substantial variation. Regional estimates are positive but differ in magnitude; technology-intensive industries show a positive response, whereas capital-intensive and labor-intensive industries show negative responses. Quantile estimates also shift from a negative coefficient at the lower quartile to increasingly positive coefficients higher in the conditional resilience distribution. The findings favor administrative and financial reforms that account for firms’ adaptation capacity rather than assuming uniform benefits. Interpretation remains conditional on the policy comparison, the indirect measurement of resilience, and unresolved inconsistencies in published scales and reporting. Digital governance appears most useful when accessible public services, financial intermediation, and firms’ capabilities are aligned; where adaptation burdens exceed usable support, the same reforms may generate less favorable outcomes.