Journal of Statistics and Information

Enhancing government digital service capacity is crucial for modernizing the national governance system and aligns closely with the initiative to “develop new quality productive forces based on local conditions” outlined in the 2025 government work report.Although notable progress has been made in the digital transformation of governments across China,significant regional disparities persist,alongside challenges such as insufficient digital infrastructure and ongoing institutional and organizational restructuring.Therefore,further investigation is needed into how to strengthen digital service capacity to synergistically promote new quality productive forces.Based on 30 Chinese provincial panel data from 2015 to 2023 and guided by the Technology-Organization-Environment(TOE)framework,this study constructs a configurational model incorporating seven factors(e.g.,digital infrastructure,government organizational openness,and intergovernmental competition)that collectively shape digital service capacity.Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis(QCA),this study identifies multiple pathways through which these factors jointly improve digital service capacity.Regression analysis is further applied to examine how these pathways drive regional new quality productive forces development.The findings reveal that no single factor is sufficient to generate high-level digital service capacity;instead,such capacity arises from the interaction of multiple conditions,with government organizational openness playing aparticularly critical role.Six distinct pathways are identified:a synergistic symbiosis type lightly promoted by government finance and digital technology application;a similar type driven by government finance and education;an organization-guided type facilitated by digital technology application;an environment-guided type supported by government finance;a diversified composite-guided type promoted by government finance in contexts of not-high civic literacy;and an environment-guided type driven by civic literacy in settings with not-high digital technology application.Five of these pathways enhance both digital service capacity and new quality productive forces development by unleashing labor productivity,reshaping production relations,and enabling innovative allocation of production factors.Credit marketization exhibits a positive moderating effect in four of the pathways,though it exerts no significant effect in the two environment-guided pathways.This study provides theoretical and empirical insights into the complex formation mechanisms of digital service capacity and its synergistic relationship with new quality productive forces,offering important policy implications for advancing national governance system modernization.