Making Data More Open and Green: A Study on the Pathways of Public Data Platform Opening to Enhance Urban Ecological Resilience

Enhancing urban ecological resilience (UER) is a central issue in advancing ecological civilization and achieving sustainable development. As a key institutional innovation driving governance transformation in the digital economy era, data element sharing (DES) and its effects on UER have yet to be fully examined through empirical investigation. Using a panel dataset of 283 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2009 to 2021, this study treats the launch of municipal government open data platforms as a quasi-natural experiment for DES and employs a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model to systematically examine the causal effects, transmission mechanisms, and spatial spillover characteristics of DES on UER. The findings are as follows. First, DES significantly enhances UER, and this conclusion remains robust after a battery of robustness checks. Second, mechanism analysis reveals that DES indirectly promotes UER through three pathways: fostering green technological innovation, optimizing resource factor allocation, and stimulating entrepreneurial vitality. Third, the promoting effect is more pronounced in eastern cities, non-resource-based cities, and cities with higher administrative ranks. Fourth, DES exerts a significant positive spatial spillover effect on UER, which peaks at approximately 250 km and dissipates beyond 450 km.