How Do Mobile Network Communities Empower Urban Community Governance?An Analysis Based on Survey Experiments

Governance strategies for urban communities in the new era should reflect the evolving patterns of social relationships among modern community residents and address the key challenge of insufficient resident participation in community self-governance. Guided by the principle of Party building leadership, this study proposes a community governance strategy—the Party–citizen joint action strategy—based on group identity recognition and enabled by mobile network communities. Using survey and experimental methods, the study examines whether and how this strategy can encourage residents to participate more actively in community governance. The findings indicate that the Party–citizen joint action strategy significantly enhances community members' support for community affairs. Its empowering effect operates primarily by strengthening residents' perception of the community as a cohesive social entity. In addition, the effectiveness of the strategy is moderated by residents' prior attitudes toward community work, which provides a basis for identifying and mobilizing key network actors in practical governance. This study contributes to the existing literature on community governance by offering additional empirical evidence and theoretical insights. It also provides practical implications for promoting community autonomy, fostering close-knit communities, and improving the overall governance ecology of urban communities.