As a new model of urban governance, the importance of smart city empowering the economy and society has become increasingly prominent, but the existing research lacks in-depth discussion on the influencing factors and governance paths of smart city. In view of this phenomenon, based on the technology - organization - environment (TOE) framework, this paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework of smart city governance, and uses the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze the configuration of 35 key city cases in China. The study finds that the lack of big data development level is the bottleneck condition of low-level smart city governance performance; There are four driving paths for high-level smart city governance performance, which are specifically divided into two modes: the governance mode led by "technology + Organization" and the governance mode led by "organization + environment"; The antecedent configuration of low-level governance performance and high-level governance performance form an asymmetric relationship. The research conclusion is helpful to deepen the in-depth discussion on the governance path and mechanism of smart city.