Digital performance accountability and legal governance in China: effectiveness and influencing factors

While previous studies have documented how the Chinese state deploys law and digital technologies to enhance social control, relatively little is known about whether local officials are more tightly monitored and regulated with the rise of law-based rule and digital governance. By employing a grounded theory approach, this study examines whether digital performance accountability experiments can promote legal compliance, which highlight the application of target management and digital technology. The findings indicate that target content, the task-technology fit in performance information use, and target priority shape the effectiveness of digital performance accountability. Specifically, most legal performance targets are oriented towards procedural formalities rather than substantive legality. While digital technologies effectively meet the demands of routine tasks such as data collection, fulfilling complex tasks like in-depth data analysis still faces some obstacles due to the lack of tacit information, resulting in partial transparency of legal performance. Furthermore, owing to the low target priority, local officials tend to engage in selective legal compliance when confronted with goal conflicts. These findings highlight the role of tacit information in shaping the interplay between digital technology, target management, and accountability and deepen the understanding of legal governance and bureaucratic control in China.