As a strategic project under the initiatives of Digital China and rural revitalization, the construction of digital villages has presented transformative opportunities for the economic development of poverty-alleviated areas. Using 25 national poverty-alleviation counties (cities and flags) included in the pilot digital villages as research samples, this study applies the TOE frame and the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method (fsQCA) to explore the driving effects of six antecedent conditions: digital facility support, digital technology empowerment, digital government guidance, digital innovation drive, peer competition pressure, and citizen demand incentives on the economic development of these areas. The findings are as follows: 1) No single factor constitutes the necessary conditions for a high level of economic development in poverty-alleviated areas; however, digital innovation drive and peer competition pressure serve as core conditions with universal significance. 2) There are three configuration paths leading to a high level of economic development in these areas: technology-oriented, innovation-pressure backward, and organization-environment symbiotic. 3) The analysis of potential substitution relationships indicates that, under certain conditions, digital infrastructure support and digital technology empowerment can equivalently substitute for each other to promote economic development in poverty-alleviated areas. 4) An analysis of regional differences reveals that central poverty-alleviated regions exhibit two second-order equivalent configurations, emphasizing the supporting role of digital facilities, while western poverty-alleviated regions focus more on the driving role of organizational and environmental dimensions. This study uncovers the complex causal relationship between digital village construction and economic development in poverty-alleviated areas and provides valuable insights for implementing differentiated digital village strategies in these regions.