Data Elements as a New Factor of Production: A Critical and Integrative Literature Review

PBES

Proceedings of Business and Economic Studies

2209-26412209-265X

Bio-Byword Scientific Publishing Pty. Ltd.

10.26689/PBES.v9i9.15606

Article

Data Elements as a New Factor of Production: A Critical and Integrative Literature Reviewhttps://artdesignp.com/journal/PBES/9/9/10.26689/PBES.v9i9.15606ShenYu

2026

2026-09-30

Data has rapidly evolved from a by-product of digital activities into an economically consequential resource that can be collected, processed, reused, exchanged, and embedded in organizational decision-making. This evolution has stimulated a growing literature across economics, management, information systems, public policy, law, and accounting, but the literature remains conceptually fragmented. In particular, scholars use the terms data resource, data asset, data element, and data factor to describe overlapping but not identical phenomena. This paper develops a critical and integrative review of the literature on data as a production factor, with particular attention to the institutionalization and marketization of data elements in China. The review is organized around four connected questions: (1) what economic characteristics distinguish data from conventional production factors; (2) how data can be transformed from a resource into a market-allocable factor; (3) how property rights, privacy, security, standards, and governance shape data circulation; and (4) through what mechanisms data-factor marketization affects productivity, innovation, digital transformation, and sustainable development. International research emphasizes the non-rival nature of data, data externalities, privacy, information asymmetry, and market design. China-focused research places greater emphasis on factor recognition, data trading institutions, market construction, property-right arrangements, and empirical identification using data-trading-platform establishment as a quasi-natural experiment. Recent evidence links data-factor marketization to enterprise digital transformation, innovation quality, regional innovation, green innovation, land-use efficiency, and other economic outcomes. However, major gaps remain in measurement and valuation, causal identification, heterogeneous data quality, cross-organizational spillovers, and the interaction between market mechanisms and governance. On this basis, the paper proposes an integrated framework in which data characteristics form the technological foundation, institutional arrangements enable circulation, market mechanisms allocate data, complementary capabilities convert data into productive inputs, and economic and social outcomes emerge from these interactions. The review concludes with a research agenda emphasizing interdisciplinary theory building, stronger measurement, causal inference, and comparative institutional analysis.Data elements, Data factor, Data factor marketization, Data market, Data governance, Digital transformation, Innovation, Literature review

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