Why Do Digital Market Regulation Platforms Persist

In recent years,digital market regulation platforms have been launched one after another as the key outcomes and major carriers of the government’s digital transformation in market regulation.However,not all digital platforms are able to persist.How can we understand the differentiated outcomes among these platforms? This article adopts an institutional analysis perspective of technology enactment,constructing an analytical framework based on the degree of technology enactment.Through comparative case analysis and process tracing methods,it examines two digital platforms launched by the Zhejiang Provincial Market Regulation Bureau,each with vastly different outcomes — “Zhejiang cold chain” and “Zhejiang fairness online.” The study finds that the persistence of digital market regulation platforms is a result of the interaction between technology and organizational factors,reflecting the degree of technology enactment.This persistence is influenced by two interdependent factors:the type of technology and the task-technology fit.During the technology adoption phase,political demands are the strongest trigger for the launch of digital platforms,but they may also lead to a selection of technology types that deviate from the intended regulatory tasks.In the technology enactment phase,only those platforms that align with long-term regulatory goals,enhance the government’s informational capacity for market regulation,and strengthen the regulatory infrastructure power—while effectively resolving the tension between “rule of law and administrative efficiency”— can persist.