As the digital economy advances, data factors are becoming more deeply embedded in household consumption through digital platforms, mobile payments, and related applications, making the extent to which their value can be translated into stronger consumption resilience a key issue in current efforts to promote consumption and expand domestic demand. A systematic examination of the effects and mechanisms of data factors on consumption resilience not only deepens the theoretical understanding of the relationship between data factors and household consumption, but also provides empirical evidence for strengthening consumption resilience and reinforcing domestic economic circulation.

Using panel data from 252 Chinese cities from 2009 to 2023, this paper examines the impact of data factors on consumption resilience. The results show that data factors significantly enhance consumption resilience. Mechanism testing identifies two principal channels: One is to raise residents’ income levels and average propensity to consume; the other is to promote the upgrading of the consumption structure. The effect varies across policy environments, as the Broadband China policy weakens the marginal effect of data factors, public data openness strengthens it, and data trading platform policies generate no significant moderating effect.

The contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it measures consumption resilience by the fluctuation of consumption relative to external uncertainty, providing a more comprehensive representation of its theoretical meaning. Second, it combines provincial data-factor development with municipal utilization capacity, capturing both the supply foundation of data factors and the process through which they are absorbed and transformed into economic value. Third, it clarifies the mechanisms through which data factors enhance consumption resilience from the perspectives of income and consumption structure. Fourth, it examines policy environments related to digital infrastructure, public data sharing, and data-factor marketization, further revealing the institutional conditions under which data factors exert their effects.