In recent years, with the development of the digital economy, emerging industries such as food delivery, ride-hailing, and live-streaming have expanded rapidly. The application of digital technologies and the proliferation of online platforms have provided rural migrants with more employment opportunities and diversified income sources. To some extent, the rise and development of new forms of the digital economy have improved the living and working conditions of rural migrants and created new opportunities for their urban integration.

This paper manually collects data on the entry timing of food delivery platforms and the number of delivery stations across 276 cities, and matches them with micro data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) covering the period 2012–2018. Employing a staggered DID model, it conducts an empirical analysis to examine the impact of new forms of the digital economy on rural migrants’ willingness for urbanization. The results indicate that the development of new forms of the digital economy significantly enhances rural migrants’ willingness for urbanization. On average, the emergence of these new forms increases the probability of expressing willingness for urbanization by approximately 5 percent. Heterogeneity analysis based on educational attainment and city size shows that the positive effect is more pronounced among migrants with a higher level of education. Moreover, compared with megacities and super-large cities, the impact of new forms of the digital economy is stronger in small and medium-sized cities. Mechanism testing further reveals that these effects operate primarily through increasing income, expanding employment opportunities, and strengthening identity recognition.

This paper makes the following marginal contributions: First, it extends the research boundary on the effects of new forms of the digital economy and enriches the literature on the urbanization of rural migrants from a digital economy perspective. Second, it provides more detailed and robust empirical evidence for examining how the development characteristics of new forms of the digital economy affect rural migrants’ willingness for urbanization.