Spatiotemporal evolution and determinants of digital industry clusters in China

Digital Industry Clusters (DICs) are vital for enhancing competitiveness in the digital economy. This study examines the spatiotemporal evolution and drivers of China’s urban DICs (2000–2023) using millions of enterprise records, urban panel data, Kernel Density Estimation, and SHAP-based interpretable machine learning. Results show that DICs expanded from localized nascent clusters to a multi-polar national ecosystem, expanding from eastern China through agglomeration, diffusion, and synergy. DIC drivers shifted from exogenous traditional inputs to endogenous digital mechanisms, led by market consumption (traditional to digital), sustained digital innovation, and foundational intelligentization popularization. Stage-specific synergies – captured via Mean Absolute Interaction SHAP (MAIS) – evolved from early consumption-innovation coupling, to policy- and mobile internet-enhanced consumption-digitalization integration, and finally to digitization-innovation synergy in the mature digital infrastructure era. This study extends the industrial cluster lifecycle framework by identifying a digital-native DIC evolution path, offering targeted guidance for global DIC growth and digital economy competitiveness.