Towards Data-Driven Sustainability: The Impact of Data Elements on Urban Green Total Factor Productivity

As green and sustainable development has become a central policy objective, identifying new drivers of urban green total factor productivity (GTFP) is of growing importance. This study examines whether data-element development is associated with improvements in urban GTFP and whether this relationship varies across different urban contexts. Using balanced panel data for 270 Chinese prefecture-level and above cities from 2011 to 2021, we construct a city-level data-element development index and employ a two-way fixed-effect framework to conduct the empirical analysis. The results show that data-element development is positively associated with urban GTFP, and this finding remains stable across a series of robustness checks. Further mechanism analyses provide evidence consistent with partial mediation through green technology innovation. The moderation analysis indicates that the GTFP-enhancing effect of data-element development is stronger in cities with higher levels of human capital. Heterogeneity analyses show that the positive effect is more pronounced in Eastern cities, higher-tier cities, and cities with stronger environmental regulation. The findings offer system-oriented policy implications for cities seeking to leverage data elements to improve GTFP, emphasizing coordinated governance across data circulation, human capital, green innovation conversion, and environmental regulation under differentiated urban conditions, thereby supporting more effective pathways for urban green productivity improvement.