Analyzing the evolution of cooperation among different parties in river water environment comprehensive treatment public-private partnership projects of China

A stakeholder perspective on social stability risk of public–private partnerships project for water environmental governance in China: A social network analysis

“…With the development of industrialization, many rivers globally are polluted by domestic emissions and industrial production emissions, especially the latter. Water pollution seriously hinders the sustainable development of society (Xue and Wang, 2020;Montwedi et al, 2021). As PPP project for water environmental governance involve multiple stakeholders, the construction process may cause a number of social risks.…”

“…As PPP project for water environmental governance involve multiple stakeholders, the construction process may cause a number of social risks. Therefore, if such a PPP project cannot be effectively managed, it will have a negative social impact on various external stakeholders, and also a negative impact on the sustainability and other aspects of agricultural irrigation, human health, society, economy and the environment (Toze, 2006;Xue and Wang, 2020;Montwedi et al, 2021). Freeman (1984) exclusively regards stakeholders as groups or individuals that have influence on the achievement of the organization's goals or the progress of group goals, or may be affected by the achievement and progress of organizational goals.…”

“…As an important task to protect the ecological environment and promote the national economy, water environmental governance has attracted great attention from the government and society (Xue and Wang, 2020), and the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) water governance is widely used (Li et al, 2019). On the one hand, the comprehensive water environmental governance projects under the PPP mode can introduce social capital and relieve the government's financial pressure; on the other hand, such projects can improve governance efficiency and give play to the professional technical level of social capital in water environment problems and its relative advantages of operation and management (Xue and Wang, 2020). However, after years of engineering practice, these projects have also revealed some problems.…”

“…Mechanisms, there has been a trend of low project returns and the gradual mechanization of governance standards (Xu et al, 2010). This trend may cause some problems, such as damage to public interests (Effah Ameyaw and Chan, 2013;Li et al, 2020), low-quality water supply service, ecological safety problems (Li et al, 2020), tremendous project cost (Xue and Wang, 2020), sewage not fully treated (Xue and Wang, 2020), and long project period (An et al, 2018). Thus, in the recent development of the PPP project for water environmental governance, the conflicts between stakeholders have become more prominent, which will eventually cause social risks and have an extremely negative impact on these projects.…”

“…The focus of the attention concerns the identification, evaluation and management of social risks (Ait-Mouheb et al, 2018;Li et al, 2019). In China, social risks are playing an increasingly significant role in project success, which poses a challenge to the social consequences of PPP projects for water environment governance under the influence of different stakeholders (Xue and Wang, 2020). However, there are few studies on the social risks of these projects, of which characteristics are different from those traditional risks (for example, cost overruns and quality issues).…”