Digital Rural Development and County-Level Common Prosperity: Evidence from Hubei Province, China

Common prosperity constitutes a fundamental goal of Chinese modernization, and digital rural development has emerged as an important pathway for advancing sustainable rural transformation. Based on balanced panel data covering 61 counties in Hubei Province from 2014 to 2023, this study empirically investigates the impact of digital rural development on county-level common prosperity and explores its underlying mechanisms. The entropy weight method is employed to construct the Digital Rural Development Index and the County-Level Common Prosperity Index. A fixed-effects model is adopted for baseline estimation, supplemented by mediation analysis, moderation analysis, and a series of robustness tests. The results reveal that digital rural development significantly promotes county-level common prosperity. Significant heterogeneity exists across county types, with stronger effects observed in Type II counties due to their stronger compatibility between agricultural foundations and digital transformation. Furthermore, financing constraint alleviation serves as an important mediating mechanism, while industrial agglomeration positively moderates this relationship by enhancing counties’ capacity to transform digital resources into inclusive development outcomes. These findings underscore the importance of strengthening rural digital infrastructure, expanding inclusive digital financial services, and implementing differentiated regional strategies to improve the effectiveness of digital rural development and promote county-level common prosperity.