Digital governance for regional environmental sustainability: configurational paths and mechanisms of local governments in China based on the TOE framework

Sustainable regional environmental governance has become a core global challenge, while digital governance provides local governments with an innovative approach to resolve complex environmental and governance dilemmas and advance the Sustainable Development Goals. Based on panel data of 31 provincial-level administrative regions in China, this study employs the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework and integrates Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) with fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to investigate the complex interactive mechanisms of driving factors for high-level comprehensive performance of digital governance and environmental sustainability (HPG). This research constructs a comprehensive outcome indicator system that couples digital governance performance (DGP) and environmental sustainability performance (ESP) to measure HPG, adopting carbon emission intensity and major pollutant reduction rate as core rigid environmental indicators to guarantee the logical correlation between digital governance practices and regional environmental sustainability. The empirical results reveal that six antecedent factors significantly shape local HPG. This study identifies three valid configurations for high-performance HPG and confirms notable substitution effects across technological, organizational, and environmental conditions. These findings provide practical implications for local governments to optimize digital governance and advance environmental sustainability through rational resource allocation, low-carbon technology adoption and interdepartmental collaboration, while offering empirical references for developing countries to promote environmental governance via digital transformation.