Evolution Trends of Urban–Rural Logistics Convergence Development in China Against the Background of Digital Economy

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The convergence development of urban–rural logistics is of great significance for narrowing the divide and promoting the exchange between urban and rural areas. The digital economy has emerged as an effective pathway to break down the industrial boundaries and drive high-quality convergence of urban–rural logistics. This study analyzes the driving mechanisms and indicator system for urban–rural logistics convergence in the digital economy context, and establishes a convergence development model, an entropy weight model, and a grey relational model. Based on statistical data from 2003 to 2022, it conducts an empirical study on the convergence level, evolutionary trends, and related factors of China’s urban–rural logistics, and explores convergence countermeasures from the composite system perspective. The findings indicate that, over the 20-year study period, China has achieved tangible progress in urban–rural logistics convergence, the subsystem’s orderly development levels alternately increased, and the composite system’s convergence level steadily improved. However, the coupling intensity of urban–rural logistics remained stagnant, and disparities in orderly development continued to exist. Among the factors, rural logistics infrastructure, urban logistics value creation, and urban logistics informatization level had relatively high relational degrees with convergence development. Urban–rural logistics convergence is a systematic project; the development of the digital economy should be taken as an opportunity, and countermeasures for convergence development should be explored from four aspects: the urban–rural logistics composite system, the urban logistics subsystem, the rural logistics subsystem, and the external environment.