How does open government data impact corporate resilience? —A signal transmission perspective

Open government data (OGD) is essential for advancing digital governance, but its influence on corporate resilience remains insufficiently explored. Based on a panel data from China’s A-share listed manufacturing firms during 2007 and 2023, this paper employs a staggered difference-in-differences model with the imputation estimator to examine the impact of OGD on corporate resilience from a signal transmission perspective. The baseline results show that OGD significantly increases firms’ return on assets (ROA) by 0.07 and reduces bankrupt risk (RC) by 0.005, indicating improvements both in corporate operational and recovery resilience. These findings remain robust after various robustness tests. Mechanism analysis reveals that OGD strengthens corporate resilience by improving the business credit environment and promoting a fair and competitive market. Heterogeneity analysis shows that OGD strengthens resilience more in non-SOE enterprises, enhances operational resilience in capital- and technology-intensive sectors, and improves recovery resilience among small and labour-intensive firms. Further analysis demonstrates that firms with lower digital viability benefit more from OGD, and that improvements in marketization and digital infrastructure amplify the effect of OGD on operational resilience. This paper offers valuable insights for improving digital governance in developing countries.