Abstract:    As a new type of production factor in the digital era, data factorization reconstructs the traditional productivity paradigm, and is an important engine to promote the transition of productivity. On the new journey of Chinese path to modernization, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study how the value of data elements can improve the digital new quality productive forces of enterprises. Using the pilot cities of big data trading centers as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper adopted the data from 287 prefecture level cities in China from 2012 to 2022, combined with a multi period DID model, to evaluate the effectiveness and mechanism of digital new quality productive forces empowered by monetization of data elements. The research found that the establishment of big data trading centers can significantly enhance digital productivity, and that the promoting effect is mainly reflected in the sample group with a higher degree of government intervention and a larger digital divide. The monetization of data can promote the development of new quality productive forces by optimizing the structure of production factors and promoting the development of the digital economy, but the transmission path of optimizing the traditional factor structure is not yet clear. Further research found that data monetization has significant spatial spillover effects. The establishment of big data trading centers under adjacent spatial weights has a significant negative spillover effect on neighboring regions, while under economic spatial weights, the improvement of local data monetization level will have a positive spillover effect on neighboring regions. The conclusion of this study will not only provide new empirical evidence for relevant departments to lay out the construction of big data trading centers, but also provide useful insights for cultivating digital new quality productive forces.

Key words: data monetization, digital new quality productive forces, production factor structure, big data exchange center