Understanding the key factors and configurational paths of the open government data performance: Based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

Abstract

The governments worldwide have attached great importance to open government data (OGD), and many OGD projects have emerged in recent years. However, the performance of OGD greatly differs in various districts and governments. Therefore, the influencing factors of OGD performance should be explored. However, the existing research has not yet established a systematic analytical framework for OGD performance, and the explanation degree of performance differences in OGD implementation is limited. Thus, this study takes technical management capacity, financial resource, organization arrangement, rules and regulations, organization culture, public demand, and inter-government competition as antecedent conditions under the perspective of technology–organization–environment framework and resource-based theory. From the cases of 16 provincial OGD practice in China, we employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to explore the influencing mechanism of the interaction and coordination of multiple conditions on OGD performance. Results indicate that OGD performance depends on the integration of the total effect of various factors. Moreover, four configurational paths could be utilized to achieve high OGD performance, namely, organization–balanced path, organization–environment path, balanced path, and organization–technology path. Furthermore, a substitution relationship exists among different conditional variables, which points out the direction and focus of the implementation of OGD for governments with different endowment characteristics. This study enriches the existing studies of OGD implementation and provides references for OGD practice.