Yuanhong Tian

Water environment collaborative governance is an important policy agenda during the Yangtze River Delta integration. Based on collaborative theory and policy value theory, this essay finds 144 water environment collaborative governance policies in the region from 2007 to 2022. It utilizes a policy collaborative model to discuss the water environment collaborative governance state at the regional and provincial levels in this region. Results show that 87.5% of water environment collaborative governance policies are enacted by local government in the region in this period, the main policy aims of which are water resource protection and wastewater pollution control. More policy attention will need to be paid to water environment restoration and off-office auditing of cadres. While administration policies and legal interventions are the main policy levers, economic policies and personal policies are relatively underused. Policy elements are significantly diversified at the provincial level in the region. In response to the findings above, this essay offers advice to improve water environment collaborative governance in the Yangtze River Delta region on four aspects: giving local governments full discretion in wastewater pollution treatment; giving full play of the water pollution control policies' value; adopting differentiated water pollution control policies; and strategies among the local government in the region, exerting policy stability.

Water pollution exhibits distinct negative externalities, necessitating trans-regional collaborative governance among basin governments. However, few studies have examined the structural features of water pollution collaboration networks among local governments in China from a spatial analysis perspective. This study focuses on 27 central cities in the Yangtze River Delta, collecting 109 policy texts and evidence of cooperative actions on water pollution governance among these cities. By utilizing a combination of social network analysis and GIS spatial analysis, the research visualizes the results and delves into the overall structure and internal features of the network. The results indicate that the density of the water pollution cooperation network is 0.75, suggesting that a relatively stable and closely connected network for collaborative governance of water pollution has been formed. Furthermore, the water pollution cooperation in the Yangtze River Delta exhibits a typical “multi-center” network structure, with Shanghai–Suzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou as the core, forming three city clusters with tighter cooperation. Suzhou, Shanghai, and Jiaxing have the highest degree of centrality, which are 51, 46, and 44, respectively. The analysis of degree centrality reveals that cities with higher levels of economic development or those that serve as provincial capitals often play a leading role in the cooperation network. The study also observes that adjacent cities or local governments closer to the core cities are more likely to establish cooperative relationships; this phenomenon is not limited by provincial administrative boundaries.

This paper investigates the mechanism of 'not in my backyard' (NIMBY) risk perception. The identification of the mechanism is a prerequisite to resolving NIMBY conflict from the perspective of social psychology rather than from a technical, economic and political perspective. Based on the concept model of NIMBY risk perception and by adopting the methods of factor analysis and multivariate regression, the research analyses collected data on NIMBY conflict cases of public rail transport in Shanghai. It reveals that NIMBY attitude and behaviour are the direct cause behind NIMBY conflict and NIMBY risk perception is its indirect cause. The empirical study also reveals that the factors of residents' value, decision-making procedures of the facility generating NIMBY conflicts, trust between resident and government and residents' knowledge of the facility causing the NIMBY conflicts, all have significant influences on the factors of residents' risk perceptions, NIMBY attitude and behaviour. It is necessary to focus on these factors and develop policy tools to improve the effectiveness of NIMBY conflict governance.

Since 2008, some of China's municipal governments have reversed the privatization of market‐led reform in the bus transport field. But this reversal is not a return to the direct public monopoly delivery model of the past. Instead the new structure is a hybrid of public control with business delivery. This mixed model attempts to balance government, market and social groups. This mode is a contracting network where government plays a lead role to organize the stakeholders to achieve common goals. This paper uses the Shanghai municipality bus service as a case to illustrate this new mode. It argues that the contract between government and operators and the participation of social groups helps balance the control of the government. This mixed network mode of management reduces information asymmetries and promotes shared goals to ensure a higher quality, more responsive service. While not a mixed firm in the sense found in Europe, this mixed public‐public contracting network in China offers insights into the core challenges mixed firms have emerged to address.