In the context of promoting digital village construction, digital formalism is regarded as a novel governance crux arising from the misalignment between technological application and governance objectives, and has become one of the important practical issues in improving rural governance efficiency. Literature review reveals two key limitations in existing research: First, technical logic analysis remains underdeveloped. Most studies merely describe phenomena, such as the term “APP flooding”, without delving into the mechanisms of technological implementation. For instance, how defective algorithm design leads to data distortion has not been adequately explained. Second, there is a lack of cross-dimensional integrated research. Technological alienation often intertwines with institutional inertia and cultural habits, as seen in “data-centric” performance assessments and blame-avoidance psychology. However, existing frameworks mostly analyze a single dimension in isolation, lacking an integrated analytical framework to systematically explain the generation logic and governance path of rural digital formalism. This paper constructs a three-dimensional analytical framework of “technology-institution-culture” to elucidate the theoretical generative logic of rural digital formalism. Through a case study of ZS Town in southwestern Hubei Province, the research finds that digital formalism manifests in five forms in practice: data supremacy, technological emptiness, technological worship, trace management, and digital isolation. At its core, this phenomenon represents the encroachment of instrumental rationality upon value rationality. Further examination reveals that in the technological dimension, the excessive expansion of instrumental rationality leads to the alienation of government platform functions; in the institutional dimension, rigid performance assessments prompt data fabrication and blame-avoidance behaviors; in the cultural dimension, bureaucratic thinking and the inertia of formalism persist in digital forms. These three dimensions, through a feedback mechanism of “technology reinforcing institutional control → institutions breeding cultural inertia → culture reshaping technological application”, collectively give rise to rural digital formalism. In response, this paper proposes countermeasures: technologically, developing lightweight tools and enhancing governance adaptability; institutionally, redesigning performance evaluation and accountability mechanisms; culturally, promoting ethical “tech-for-good” norms and fostering public participation ecosystems. This integrated approach aims to unravel the “black box” of rural digital formalism and realign digital rural governance with its core public value. Despite the efforts made in this study, the governance framework of “technology empowerment, institutional optimization, and cultural cultivation” constructed in this study has been validated in local practices such as “Run at Most Once” in Zhejiang and “Yueshengxin” (literally “the Heart of Guangdong Province”) in Guangdong. However, its universality still needs to be adjusted adaptively according to different administrative levels and regional characteristics. Future research can focus on two directions: First, how to explore the dynamic balance mechanism of digital governance and establish a more flexible “prevention-identification-correction” adaptive system; Second, how to deepen research on technological ethics and build a value evaluation system for digital governance with Chinese characteristics.