Public data access helps stimulate the value of data resources and promote the construction of digital China. It is a key measure to promote the free flow of data elements and activate their potential. Some scholars conduct research on the microeconomic consequences of public data access, while ignoring its role in promoting the nonlocal development of enterprise groups. Establishing nonlocal subsidiaries by enterprise groups can effectively break market segmentation and promote the cross-regional flow of capital. Given that enterprise groups face high information costs in nonlocal development, it is of great theoretical significance and policy value to study whether public data access can assist in breaking down barriers to the cross-regional free flow of capital elements and promote the nonlocal development of enterprise groups.

Using data from China’s A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2021, this paper takes the batch launch of public data access platforms in prefecture-level cities as a quasi-natural experiment, and constructs a DID model to examine the impact of public data access on the nonlocal development of enterprise groups. The study shows that public data access significantly increases nonlocal investment, thereby promoting the nonlocal development of enterprise groups. Mechanism testing shows that this effect is mainly achieved by reducing information costs. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive effect is more significant when regional institutional barriers are higher, industry informatization is weaker, and enterprise digitization is lower. Further analysis shows that there is no significant crowding-out effect of public data access on the investment of local subsidiaries. Public data access significantly increases the level of cross-industry nonlocal investment, but it has an insignificant effect on nonlocal investment in the same industry. Meanwhile, new nonlocal investment significantly increases the overall performance level of enterprise groups.

The contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it explores how public data access assists enterprise groups in accessing and utilizing information, which in turn promotes the nonlocal development of enterprise groups, providing direct micro evidence on how the free flow of data elements help smooth the domestic economic cycle and enriching the research on the economic consequences of public data access. Second, it examines whether public data access helps enterprise groups break through regional information barriers and promote cross-regional investment, complementing the research on the determinants of the nonlocal development of enterprise groups. Third, it explores in depth whether public data access has a crowding-out effect on local investment, and the impact of public data access on the cross-industry flow of capital and the overall performance of enterprise groups, providing rich micro evidence for the synergistic effect between data elements and capital market development.