Digital Habitus and Institutional Compensation: Mechanisms and Governance Pathways of the Innovation–Entrepreneurship Divide between Urban and Rural University Students in China

As the digital access divide narrows, disparities in university students’ innovation capacity and entrepreneurial intention continue to widen. To move beyond the binary of technological versus structural determinism, we advance a technology–cognition–institution framework to illuminate less visible pathways that reproduce urban–rural inequality. Drawing on a national survey of 31,779 Chinese university students, we estimate multilevel mixed-effects models and a theory-ordered structural equation model. Three patterns emerge. (1) We observe pronounced gradient differences across digital literacy, information perception, innovation capacity, and entrepreneurial intention (urban > county > township), including a medium effect size for digital literacy (Cohen’s d = 0.428). (2) The sequential pathway “digital literacy → information perception” statistically operates as the core channel, accounting for roughly one-third of the modeled total association in innovation capacity and more than four-fifths in entrepreneurial intention. (3) University institutional resources exhibit compensatory features: Double First-Class universities both partially substitute for deficits in digital literacy through offline support (interaction β = −0.039, p < .05) and attenuate the cognition-formation link by reshaping the “digital literacy → information perception” pathway (β = −0.021, p < .05). Taken together, the findings are consistent with the view that digital habitus—conceived as a new form of cultural capital—sustains inequality via cognitive mechanisms. County regions, with their transitional position, emerge as pivotal nodes for policy targeting. We propose an integrated governance approach of stepwise intervention, institutional compensation, and dual-track strategies to support inclusive digital transformation.