Abstract:    Optimizing the business environment and enhancing the vitality of market entities is a crucial force in achieving common prosperity. However, how to optimize business environment for achieving urban common prosperity is a major practical issue. Given the complexity of business environment, this study combined the resource allocation theory, new economic growth theory, and institutional theory in conjunction with the entropy weight method and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to investigate the complex causal relationship between business environment configuration and common prosperity in 268 Chinese cities from a configuration perspective. The findings suggested that: (1) A single condition of business environment does not constitute necessary condition for achieving high common prosperity; (2) Four paths would lead to high common prosperity, namely technological progress-driven market allocation under institutional constraint, technical efficiency-driven market allocation under institutional guarantee, social resource-driven market allocation under institutional guarantee, and innovation-driven market allocation under institutional regulation; (3) High market environment plays a universal role in achieving common prosperity. The conclusions have revealed the complex causal mechanism of multiple conditions in the business environment that collectively influence urban common prosperity. Moreover, this study will deepen the understanding of diverse paths for achieving high common prosperity, and provide theoretical and practical enlightenment for constructing high-level sharing mechanism and a high-quality development pattern in Chinese cities.

Key words: common prosperity, business environment, configurational perspective, fsQCA