Performance and Participants’ Decisions Analysis in Major Water Resources Allocation Project Based on Network Governance

Major water resources allocation projects (MWRAP) are large-scale complex ventures with long construction periods and involve many stakeholders. In practice, the “Dilemma of Collaborative Action” often exists in the construction of MWRAP due to the contradictions and conflicts between various participants, with coordination failure. Despite realizing the importance of MWRAP, the current research still lacks a deep understanding of related organizational issues. Adopting network governance theory (NG) as a point of departure, this study first reviewed the classic NG and current research status systematically. To solve the “Dilemma of Collaborative Action”, the classic NG was then introduced to the context to construct a four-party mathematical model, which emphasizes the cooperation among government, (In this research, the central government, local government, and government agencies are collectively called “government”) project owner, contractor, and consultant and can maximize the performance of MWRAP. A network governance framework across individual, group, project and organizational fields was elaborated for NG research in MWRAP, and future research directions in this area were proposed and discussed. At the same time, it anatomizes the control rights and effort level of the four-party participants and their influences on the performance of MWRAP. The performance can be improved only when the control rights and effort level are in effective ranges. All these conclusions are done well by data simulation. This research not only bridges the research gap in MWRAP governance from a new perspective but also contributes to the enrichment and development of NG in a new context.