Assessing the Development Level of the Digital Economy Using Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation: A Comparative Study of the Yangtze River Delta and Kyushu Region

Abstract

In the context of economic development, the role of the digital economy is increasingly prominent. To deeply understand this phenomenon, this paper constructs a digital economy development evaluation model and applies the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assign weights to 15 key indicators. Furthermore, the Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation Method is used to measure and compare the development of the digital economy in the three provinces and one city of the Yangtze River Delta in China and nine counties of the Kyushu area in Japan. The results show that Shanghai and Zhejiang provinces have the most outstanding performance in digital economy development, while Miyazaki Prefecture is relatively lagging. Based on these findings, this paper proposes to focus on the growth rate of patent numbers and strengthen the construction of innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems as recommendations to provide useful references for the future development of the digital economy.