How Does Public Data Openness Affect Urban Export Resilience: Evidence from 283 Prefecture-Level Cities in China

Public data openness refers to the practice whereby governments make the raw data collected, generated, and managed during public administration freely available to society through unified platforms for public development and use. As a government-led reform in digital governance, public data openness offers a new approach to strengthen urban export resilience. Using panel data from 283 cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2009 to 2023, we construct a comprehensive evaluation system to measure urban export resilience. Taking the launch of local public data platforms as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model and a mediating effect model to examine the impact of public data openness on urban export resilience and its underlying mechanisms. The results show that public data openness significantly improves urban export resilience by improving the institutional environment and enhancing information acquisition efficiency. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that the effect is stronger in eastern cities with higher levels of economic development, higher administrative ranks, and larger urban size. These findings enrich the literature on the economic consequences of public data openness and provide policy recommendations for strengthening urban resilience through digital governance.