Same platform, different outcomes: Metadata practices and open data use

Despite widespread adoption of open government data (OGD) initiatives, actual use remains limited, raising questions about how these public digital platforms are designed and governed. Prior research highlights the importance of data quality and usability for encouraging OGD use, yet empirical evidence linking specific design choices to observed user behavior remains scarce. This study draws on affordance theory to examine how metadata design features embedded in open data platforms shape open data use. The analysis draws on primary data collected from 15 U.S. cities' open data platforms (N = 5863) to first assess the extent to which government agencies actualize metadata affordances to promote data quality and usability then test the relationship between affordance actualizations and two observed measures of use: dataset views and downloads. Results show that multiple dimensions of metadata practice are strongly and consistently associated with OGD use, with some practices linked to substantially higher levels of open data use. Even within a shared platform environment, variation in how publishers provide metadata correspond to meaningful differences in how often datasets are accessed, highlighting that metadata governance is not merely a technical detail but a factor that materially shapes user engagement with open data.