Abstract: There are regional differences in the process of government data opening in China, and the lack of mobility and coordination of government open data in different regions seriously hinders the aggregation and utilization of cross-regional heterogeneous data. Therefore, it is necessary for multi-party participants to collaborate in data governance and promote cross-regional government data co-governance in order to further explore the value of open data. This paper constructs a quadrilateral evolutionary game model of data co-governance that includes the central government, two cross-regional government data open platforms at the same administrative level, and data utilization groups to explore the equilibrium strategy and strategy stability of multi-party participation in government data co-governance. It also combines the simulation analysis of data related to two local governments in 2022 to study key factors such as policy differences and data utilization groups’ behavior on the evolutionary path. This paper finds that: the central government’s subsidy mechanism for data utilization groups can promote their information feedback, which in turn promotes data co-governance of open government data platforms in the two regions, and as the satisfaction level of co-governance increases, the central government shifts from the punishment mechanism to the subsidy mechanism for platforms; the cross-incentive mechanism under the subsidy mechanism can alleviate the free-rider behavior of platforms in government data co-governance and realize collaborative data co-governance in the two regions; the implementation of differential incentives under the penalty mechanism under specific conditions can avoid the prisoner’s dilemma of the two regional platforms and realize the collaborative data co-governance. Finally, policy and management suggestions are put forward from the perspective of each government data co-governance participant to provide a reference for cross-regional local governments to implement government data co-governance on open data.

Key words: open government data, data co-governance, data utilization groups, cross-regional, quadrilateral evolutionary game