Multiple Formation Mechanisms of Community Resilience in Small and Medium-Sized Cities Under Resource Constraints: A Configurational Pathway Analysis Based on the TOE Framework

Existing studies have extensively examined the factors influencing community resilience; however, insufficient attention has been paid to the synergistic effects of multiple conditions and differentiated configurational pathways under resource constraints. Drawing on the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework, this study examines 30 communities in small and medium-sized cities in Southwest China and integrates Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) with fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to investigate the multiple formation mechanisms and configurational pathways of community resilience. The results show that (1) resource constraints do not constitute a deterministic barrier to high community resilience but instead serve as an important contextual condition shaping pathway selection; communities facing high resource constraints can still achieve high resilience through capability reconstruction; (2) no single condition is necessary for high community resilience, while seven configurational pathways can lead to this outcome, with an overall solution consistency of 0.9749 and an overall solution coverage of 0.7601; these pathways can be grouped into three mechanisms—technology-oriented strengthening, organization-based compensation, and multi-dimensional collaboration; (3) infrastructure and response capacity provides stable foundational support across multiple high-resilience pathways, while the conditions exhibit patterns of potential functional substitution and configurational complementarity; and (4) low resilience is not simply a consequence of resource scarcity but primarily reflects the failure of key conditions to form effective configurations. By moving beyond a simple linear association between resource stocks and resilience levels, this study reveals a resilience formation logic of “resource allocation–capability reconstruction–configurational fit” and provides theoretical and practical implications for differentiated resilience governance in resource-constrained communities.