关键词: 新冠疫情, 数字化, 企业弹性, 熵值法

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has an unprecedented impact on enterprises. Meanwhile，the recent digitalization is becoming a new driver and key support of enterprises’innovative development and economic high-quality growth. Using the data of enterprises and building digitalization indexes based on the entropy evaluation method，an empirical study is done on entrepreneurial digitalization in relation to the economic elasticity of an enterprise in withstanding and easing the impact of the pandemic. It is discovered that when the characteristics of entrepreneurial demands are under control，digital enterprises，compared with those of a limited digitalization，suffered a lower sales drop during the pandemic，with an average reduction rate of 5.5 percent. This proves that digitalization has softened the impact of the pandemic. An heterogeneous analysis of digitalization further shows that enterprises in the Chinese eastern and southern regions，state-holding enterprises，foreign-funded enterprises，and enterprises in their maturity have displayed a more distinct elastic effect. A mediation mechanism test verifies that digitalization has affected and adjusted the impact of the pandemic on corporate performance via improving the innovation capability of enterprises，easing financing constraints，and offering optimistic growth predictions. Based on the above，the policy advice is to adjust the digital strategy as soon as possible in the post-pandemic era，narrowing down the digital gap between different regions and enterprises，increase the investment on and support for digita lization，and achieve a comprehensive and balanced entrepreneurial digitalization.

Key words: COVID-19 pandemic, digitalization, entrepreneurial elasticity, entropy evaluation method