Technology, Intergovernmental Pressure, and the Diffusion of Online Budget Disclosure in China: A TOE and Policy Diffusion Perspective

Despite nationwide transparency mandates and expanding digital infrastructure, Chinese local governments adopted online budget disclosure at markedly different times. This study explains this staggered diffusion by integrating the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework with policy diffusion theory and analyzing 290 prefecture-level governments in China from 2002 to 2023 using discrete-time event history models. The results show that government website development, central government mandates, and peer-city adoption are positively and robustly associated with the likelihood of adoption. By contrast, provincial government disclosure, regional economic development, fiscal pressure, and internet penetration show no stable independent effects in the full models. Interaction analyses reveal, however, that economic development and internet penetration strengthen the association between website development and adoption, while fiscal pressure does not. These findings indicate that local environmental conditions function primarily as enabling conditions that amplify technological capacity rather than as autonomous drivers. The study advances research on fiscal transparency and public-sector innovation by shifting attention from whether governments disclose to when adoption occurs, offering a conditional interpretation of the TOE framework, and demonstrating how vertical authority, horizontal peer dynamics, and digital readiness jointly shape policy diffusion in a unitary governance system.