How does data sharing affect the sustainable development of agribusiness? Evidence from public data openness

Agriculture is an important production sector in Chinese national economy, and sustainable development of agribusiness is related to the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, public data openness policy is continuously injecting new power into development. However, no study focused on the relationship between public data openness policy (OPEN) and the sustainable development of agribusiness (SDA). Based on the data of A-share listed agribusiness from 2012 to 2021, we uses the public data open platform as a quasi-natural experiment and uses a difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of public data openness on the sustainable development of agribusiness. The findings of this paper are as follows. First, public data openness significantly contributes to the sustainable development of agribusiness. After a series of robustness tests, the above conclusion still holds. Second, the results of the mechanistic tests show that public data openness contributes to sustainable development mainly by improving the operational capacity and innovation capacity of enterprises. Third, the positive impact of public data openness on the sustainable development performance of non-state-owned and small-scale agribusinesses is more significant than that of state-owned and large-scale agribusinesses. Fourth, good innovation environments help to enhance the positive impact of public data openness. This paper has theoretical value for the development of agribusiness in the context of the public data openness and can also guide policymakers in further improving related policies.