Where do digital entrepreneurs thrive? The geography of Douyin vloggers in China

The rise of the digital economy has reshaped urban competition, with digital entrepreneurship now at the core of this competition. Yet this phenomenon remains under-theorised and spatially blind. To address this gap, digital entrepreneurs (DEs) – defined as those whose core value-creation activities are carried out in the digital realm and are only made possible through digital technologies – are examined using Douyin vloggers as a representative case. Based on vlogger data from Chinese cities in 2023, fixed effects models are employed for empirical analysis, accompanied by a series of robustness checks. Findings reveal a positive correlation between the number of vloggers in a city and geographical factors such as the mobile phone user base, talent power and the presence of preferential digital-economy policies. Conversely, a negative correlation is observed with per capita gross domestic product. Moreover, divergent agglomeration logics are uncovered among DEs: less influential vloggers tend to be driven by necessity and infrastructure access, whereas highly influential vloggers cluster in technologically advanced cities with high-end urban amenities.