Abstract

Regional innovation serves as the cornerstone of national innovation development. In the digital era, identifying the pathways and spatiotemporal effects through which the digital ecosystem drives regional scientific and technological innovation has become critical to breaking through bottlenecks in regional scientific and technological innovation and enhancing innovation efficacy. Drawing upon the TOE framework, and grounded in the resource-based view and the co-evolutionary theory, this study uses a dynamic QCA approach to analyze panel data from 31 Chinese provinces over the period 2019–2023. From a configurational perspective, this paper investigates the pathways and effects through which the digital ecosystem enables regional scientific and technological innovation. The findings are as follows: High digital talent and low digital innovation serve as necessary conditions for high and non-high regional scientific and technological innovation, respectively. Four configurational pathways are identified for high regional scientific and technological innovation, namely: technology-dominated, technology-organization-dominated, technology-environment-dominated, organization-environment-dominated. In contrast, five configurational pathways are found to lead to non-high regional scientific and technological innovation. In the temporal dimension, the evolutionary trajectories of various configurations for high scientific and technological innovation differ, with 2021 serving as a critical turning point, and the development levels among these configurations are heterogeneous. In the spatial dimension, configurations of high-tech innovation exhibit differential spatial effects and region-specific adaptability. This study provides both theoretical support and policy implications for understanding how digital ecosystems empower regional scientific and technological innovation from a spatiotemporal perspective.