Impact,of,environmental,governance,PPP,project,on,government,performance,from,the,perspective,of,value,co-creation

REN Zhi-tao, YAN Ying , WEI Chang, YANG Hao

School of Economics and Management, Tianjin Chengjian University, Tianjin 300384, CHINA

Abstract: Under the background of public-private cooperation in environmental governance, there are conflicts in the value of governance subjects based on differences in objectives and behavior heterogeneity. From the perspective of value co-creation theory, the questionnaire data and correlation structure measurement linked list are used to investigate the internal mechanism of value co-creation behavior affecting government performance. The results of the study show that value co-creation behavior has a significant positive impact on government performance, and partnership plays a mediating role in value co-creation behavior and government performance. The study reveals that whether value co-creation behavior can affect government performance depends on the partnership among the government, enterprises and the public, and the participants realize the interest demands to form value co-creation behavior, and innovate the realization path to improve government performance. This paper expands the research perspective of the influencing factors of value co-creation behavior, deepens the value cognition of multi-subject behavior, and provides a theoretical reference for environmental governance and improving government performance.

Key words: government performance; environmental governance; public-private partnership; value cocreation

As an important driving force for social and economic development, public-private cooperation in environmental governance puts forward higher requirements for government performance, and theGuiding Opinions on The Construction of a Modern Environmental Governance Systememphasizes the construction of an environmental governance system led by the government, with enterprises as the main body, social organizations and the public participating. Under the implementation of the “index down pressure” target responsibility assessment system for environmental governance in China, environmental governance is closely related to the performance of government governance supported by public values, and multiple participants are aggregated, and the co-creation behavior based on heterogeneous values and the synergistic effect of partners are brought together. Achieve value goals that improve government performance. Under the principal-agent theory, there is information asymmetry among multiple subjects, which is based on the difference of goals and the heterogeneity of behavior, resulting in conflicts in the value of environmental governance. It is necessary to look at the new opportunities and challenges in the new stage of development with dialectical thinking.

Value co-creation theory provides a theoretical basis for the adjustment of public-private partnerships in environmental governance, and member interaction enhances relationship stickiness, and enhances partnerships to promote the realization of value creation and efficiency of subjects and resource utilization (Wu, 2012). Bao (2018) explores the government governance paradigm of strategic positioning, institutional reform and performance improvement under the transformation of government functions since the reform and opening up. Bao (2012) proposes a theoretical model of government performance management based on public values, and advocates the network structure of multiple subjects as governance units. Sun (2018) explores the transformation process of service-oriented government functions based on performance management. Rosenbloom (2017) points out that government performance evaluation can start from the value structure. Taking the evolutionary logic and path of government value conflicts as the starting point, more process-oriented government governance strategies and tools have been developed.

Based on the evolution of value co-creation behavior, public-private partnerships are factors that cannot be ignored in government performance, continuously collecting, identifying and coordinating social values, effectively linking public values with government performance, reducing enterprise costs, and enhancing enterprise participation enthusiasm and government performance (Zhaoet al., 2019). Liu (2018) integrated the performance evaluation model of ecological governance policy cost structure and the performance evaluation model of public value to construct an ecological governance performance evaluation model under government regulation. Value co-creation is also subject to public-private partnerships, and multisubject coordination and mutual assistance promote the extension of the government value chain to resolve value conflicts. In short, according to the theory of value co-creation and the theory of government performance, partnerships can affect government performance in the process of publicprivate cooperation in environmental governance, and can improve information transparency, reduce market transaction costs, and promote in a sound and perfect institutional environment the improvement of government governance performance in environmental governance has created a new chapter for public-private environmental governance.

Environmental governance public-private partnership projects are complex, and the project results involve many participants with different interests, so the concept of management performance of environmental governance projects has not been uniformly defined. Therefore, starting from the public-private partnership of environmental governance, this paper combines value co-creation theory, public value theory and government performance theory to explore the mechanism of the impact of value co-creation behavior on government performance. In order to provide useful policy enlightenment for improving the performance of environmental governance governments.

2.1 Assumptions about the relationship between value co-creation behavior and government performance

Government performance is a process of evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of government administrative activities, and is a social governance tool to achieve the expected goals of the government and improve performance. Government performance from value orientation to pluralistic coexistence, environmental governance multi-subjects through conflict, communication, negotiation, action to find value common ground, through the frequent interaction of multiple subjects, mechanism conversion and communication and consultation, to stimulate value creation action. Wang (2018) found that shaping the consciousness of value co-creation forms value cocreation behavior, which effectively improves corporate performance. Stakeholder interconnectedness determines the existence of an endogenous and exogenous relationship between government performance, when responding to value demands to internal stakeholders, improving user satisfaction and reducing costs through social media, and transforming leadership roles and public values , the formation of value co-creation behavior, enhance brand value and core competitiveness, will effectively improve the performance of the government. Meanwhile, Wang (2019) pointed out that value innovation and its realization path have significant value for innovation management and performance improvement. Heintzman(2015) linked the public service value chain with government performance, and explored that the government value chain not only contains the goal of “profit”, but also faces various value conflicts and value balance. Therefore, this paper proposes hypothesis 1.

Hypothesis 1: Value co-creation has a positive regulatory effect on government performance.

2.2 Assumptions about the relationship between partnership and government performance

Partnership is a derivative concept of organizational relationship. As Inter-organizational elements, government, enterprises and the public are the cornerstone of multi-body participation in environmental governance PPP value creation. While paying attention to economic development and environmental protection efficiency, government performance pays more attention to social equity, public satisfaction and sustainable development.The concepts of democratic politics, civil rights and citizen participation should be integrated into the value pursuit of government performance management and evaluation. Han (2015) explored stable partnership, positive regulation learning mechanism and performance relationship from the perspective of social network governance, and introduced it into the administrative supervision mechanism of higher-level government, and promoted participants to build cross domain partnership through resource sharing and integration, which will improve government performance. With the development of big data, Ma (2019) explored the people-oriented and data-driven government performance management model, which has been powerfully promoted Administrative accountability, public oversight, and continuous improvement of government governance performance have contributed to the development of partnerships, from which this article follows The above analysis proposes hypothesis 2.

Hypothesis 2: Partnerships have a positive regulatory effect on government performance.

2.3 Assumptions about the relationship between partnership and value co-creation

Under the people-oriented concept, the synergy of government functions and corporate responsibility will affect the co-creation behavior between government and enterprise, and before the value co-creation partnership is established, the participants are first identified, common value definitions, shared risks are shared, and initial resources are identified. From the perspective of the value co-creation process, partnerships obtain value cocreation resources through partner identification, relationship initiation and relationship adjustment. Li (2010) believes that the construction of cross-disciplinary partnerships needs to integrate formal relationships and informal relationships, and formal relationships include effective formal contracts. Informal relationships include both relational contracts and psychological contracts. In the process of value co-creation and government performance realization, participants contribute resources around the realization of common goals, and the development potential and stable development of the partnership can be based on whether they have achieved their stated goals and whether they have provided the resources that should be provided. Warsen (2018) takes interaction and cooperation as the logical starting point for multisubject formation of partnership and cooperation process, stabilizes and maintains the interaction behavior between subjects and enhances the adaptability of partnership. At the same time, the participation in the formation of a stability mechanism can provide guarantees for innovation and enhance the effectiveness of the group, if the subjects due to the uneven allocation of resources caused by the reduction of interests lead to value loss, restricting the value co-creation behavior. Therefore, this paper proposes hypothesis 3.

Hypothesis 3: Partnerships have a positive regulatory effect on value co-creation behavior.

2.4 The intermediary role of partnerships

Partnership is a derivative concept of organizational relationship, partnership emphasizes a stable relationship with resource dependence and consistency of purpose, as an inter-organizational element, partnership has a positive impact on value co-creation and performance realization and improvement. Song (2006) argues that the more stable the relationship between organizations and the more beneficial resources are gathered, the easier it is for individuals within the organization to obtain resources from the outside and effectively improve organizational performance. From the perspective of social network governance mechanism, we explore the relationship between the learning mechanism and performance of stable partnerships that can positively regulate the learning mechanism between partners. Partnership emphasizes the pursuit of common value goals through mutual learning and communication, and the formation of a stable relationship of long-term cooperation with resource dependence and consistency of goals, and stable labor relations will promote organizational productivity, product service quality and product performance, and have a positive impact on value co-creation and performance improvement. Lin (2019) further emphasized that external incentive behavior can stimulate organizational creativity more than internal autonomous behavior. Harmonious and stable organizational relationship will gather beneficial resources to improve organizational performance, which is conducive to improving organizational production efficiency and user satisfaction. The above analysis proposes hypothesis 4.

Hypothesis 4: Partnerships have an intermediary effect between value co-creation and government performance.

3.1 Sample and data collection

In this study, questionnaire survey was used to collect data. A total of 278 copies were collected, and the effective number was 265, and the personnel responsible for public-private cooperation projects in government departments accounted for 35%; the personnel of enterprises and financial institutions accounted for 43%; the general citizens accounted for 12%; the teachers and researchers of colleges and universities accounted for 10%, and the SPSS software was used to analyze the obtained data to verify the hypothesis.

3.2 Variable measurement

Based on the research assumptions and quantitative processing, value co-creation behavior and government performance variables are measured to test the mediation effect of partnership. An impact model with value co-creation as the independent variable, government performance as the dependent variable, and partnership as the mediating variable was constructed and analyzed by using Likert 5-level scale method.

3.2.1 A measure of value co-creation behavior

The value co creation behavior of multiple subjects is very important to the value co creation results. Through the literature research on enterprise marketing behavior and organizational learning behavior, based on the scholars’ improvement of Peng (2010) behavior scale from the perspective of customer participation, a preliminary value co creation behavior scale is prepared. The value co creation behavior is mainly divided into three dimensions: resource sharing behavior, communication behavior and feedback behavior.

3.2.2 A measure of government performance

Taking the public value management theory as the background, Holzer’s government performance improvement path selection and 4E index are adopted. The connotation of government performance guided by the public value-based government performance governance theory includes financial performance, ecological performance and partnership performance.

3.2.3 A scale of measurements for partnerships

The relevant design of the multi-subject strategic network connection relationship analysis scale, in the process of value co-creation of publicprivate partnership projects in environmental governance, the partnership is mainly reflected in: reciprocal partnership, interdependent partnership, flexible partnership and competitive partnership, based on Xie’s measurement questionnaire, modified to adapt to the needs of this paper to design analysis scale. Variable measurement items are shown in Table 1.

4.1 Reliability and validity analysis

Determine whether there is an error in the results of the questionnaire survey, the paper conducts reliability and validity tests on the survey data, and tests the internal consistency of the project by using The Cronbach’sαcoefficient Construct reliability factors to test the internal mass of potential variables. As shown in Table 2, the reliability of the Value Co-creation Behavior Scale, the Government Performance Scale, and the Partnership Scale were 0.962, 0.950, and 0.943, respectively. The overall Cronbach’s α coefficient values for shared resource behavior, information communication behavior, and feedback behavior in the value co-creation behavior scale were 0.903, 0.909, and 0.879, respectively. The overall Cronbach’sαcoefficient values for economic performance, ecological performance and partnership performance in the Government Performance Scale were 0.863, 0.856 and 0.877, respectively. The overall Cronbach’sαcoefficient values for reciprocal, interdependent, flexible and competitive partnerships in the Partnership Behavior Scale were 0.797, 0.854, 0.758 and 0.776, respectively. The above overall Cronbach’sαcoefficient values are all greater than 0.7, and the overall reliability of the questionnaire data is better and passes the test.

Structural validity analysis is measured by using KMO value and Bartlett’s test, and the factor analysis method as shown in Table 3. The cumula-tive variance interpretation rate after the rotation of value co-creation behavior was 71.849%, greater than 50%, the load value of each question item in the value co-creation behavior scale was greater than 0.5 in dimension, and the KMO value was 0.971, which was greater than 0.6; the cumulative variance interpretation rate after the government performance rotation was 76.591%, which was greater than 50%. The load value of each item in the government performance scale is greater than 0.5 in dimension, the KMO value is 0.952, which is greater than 0.6; the cumulative variance interpretation rate after the rotation of the partnership scale is 78.466%, which is greater than 50%, and the load value of each topic item in the partnership scale is greater than 0.5 in dimension, and the KMO value is 0.958, which is greater than 0.6, indicating that the data are valid.

Table 2 Reliability analysis results

Table 3 Validity analysis results

4.2 Hypothesis testing

4.2.1 Correlation test

In this paper, pearson’s correlation test is used to test the correlation between value co-creation behavior, government performance, and the hypothesis model of partnership. The significant level of correlation test is 5%, and the correlation coefficient between value co-creation behavior and government performanceβ=0.940,P＜0.01, value co-creation behavior has a significant positive correlation with government performance (Table 4). Correlation coefficient between partnership and government performanceβ=0.936,P＜0.01, indicating that there is a significant positive correlation between partnership and government performance, and the correlation coefficient between partnership and value co-creation behavior isβ=0.940,P＜0.01, indicating that there is a significant positive correlation between partnership and value co-creation behavior.

4.2.2 Regression analysis

Through correlation analysis, it is known that there is a significant correlation between value cocreation behavior and government performance, the independent variable of value co-creation behavior is recorded as X1 and the dependent variable of government performance is recorded as Y1. There is a significant correlation between partnership and government performance, the independent variable of partnership is recorded as X2 and the dependent variable of government performance is recorded as Y2. There is a significant correlation between partnership and value co-creation behavior, the independent variable of partnership is recorded as X3 and the dependent variable of value co-creation behavior is recorded as Y3. Regression analysis was carried out for the above three groups of relationships.

Table 5 shows that the regression coefficient of value co-creation behavior passes the significance test and is significantly different from zero (Sig.＜0.05), and the regression coefficient of “value co-creation behavior” is 0.951, indicating that value co-creation behavior has a significant positive impact on government performance, the impact coefficient is 0.951, and the unary regression equation between value co-creation behavior and government performance is:

Table 4 Correlation tests

The regression equation shows that, all other things being constant, for every unit increase in value co-creation, government performance increases by 0.951 units, indicating that the hypothesis 1 holds.

The regression coefficient of the partnership passed the significance test and was significantly different from zero (Sig.＜0.05), and the regression coefficient of the “partnership” was 0.978, indicating that the partnership had a significant positive impact on government performance, and its impact coefficient size was 0.978, and the unary regression equation between partnership and government performance was:

The regression equation shows that, all other things being equal, for every unit increased in partnership, government performance increased by 0.978 units, indicating that the hypothesis 2 holds.

The regression coefficient of the partnership passed the significance test and was significantly different from zero (Sig.＜0.05), and the regression coefficient of the “partnership” was 0.970, indicating that the partnership had a significant positive effect on the value co-creation behavior, the size of the impact coefficient was 0.970, and the unary regression equation between the partnership and the value co-creation behavior was:

The regression equation shows that, all other things being equal, for every unit increased in partnership, value co-creation behavior increased by 0.970 units, indicating that the hypothesis 3 holds.

4.2.3 Intermediary analysis

Value co-creation behavior is defined as independent variable, government performance is the dependent variable, value co-creation behavior has a significant positive impact on government performance (β=0.951,P＜0.001); value co-creation behavior is defined as an independent variable, partnership is the dependent variable, and value co-creation behavior has a significant positive impact on partnership (β=0.910,P＜0.001); value co-creation behavior and partnership as the independent variable, government performance as the dependent variable, value co-creation behavior has a significant positive impact on government performance (β=0.523,P＜0.001).

When the regression coefficient is less than 1, join the partnership, and the regression coefficient of the value co-creation behavior to the government performance decreases, and the statistical value is first tested by Sobel, whereaandSaare non-standardized impact factors and standard errors for value co-creation behavior on government performance, respectively,bandSbare nonstandardized impact factors and standard errors for partnerships on government performance, respectively. Second, according to the calculation of their own willZsobelof 10.61 is greater than the critical value of 1.96, the partnership in the value co-cre-ation behavior of the mediating effect on government performance is significant, the partnership in the median between value co-creation and government performance suggests that the hypothesis 4 holds (Table 6).

Table 5 Regression coefficients

Table 6 Mediation tests of partnerships

In the operation of public-private cooperation projects in environmental governance, this paper innovatively applies the government performance management theory based on public value to the government performance management research of public-private cooperation projects in environmental governance, integrates the value co-creation theory, and guides the value co-creation behavior of multiple subjects. The research shows that the value co-creation behavior formed by multiple subjects of government, enterprises and the public has a positive regulatory effect on government performance. Under formal and informal contracts, the government, enterprises and the public form flexible and competitive partnerships based on conflict and synergy; under the collective value preference, the three parties form mutually reciprocal partnerships and interdependent partnerships through resources, policies and technology. Partnerships play an intermediary role between value co-creation behavior and government performance. Partnerships positively regulate government performance and value co-creation behavior, and then promote the formation of value co-creation behavior by multiple subjects of environmental governance, so as to provide relevant references for the sustainable development of public-private cooperation projects in environmental governance.

In the operation of public-private cooperation projects on environmental governance, the partnership between government, enterprises and the public should be clarified and value co-creation behavior should be guided under the drive of value co-creation. The government should optimize the functions of its departments, improve the execution ability of officials and policy services, provide convenient services for enterprises and smooth government affairs channels for the public, form good partnerships through financial incentives and active communication with participants, solve prominent environmental problems, and promote the participation of multiple actors in public-private cooperation projects on environmental governance. Enterprises should take the public interests as the foothold, improve the financing channels, provide technology to enhance the governance efficiency of funds, and improve market share. Enterprises must set up environmental protection value, at the same time, actively participate in environmental governance for promoting social effect, improve the social environment, bring more social organizations to actively participate in, and promote government performance improvement. The public should enhance social awareness of environmental protection, cultivate environmental action motivation, timely feedback demands to the government and enterprises, improve the overall social awareness of environmental governance, enhance the satisfaction of all parties, and effectively enhance the carrying capacity of government performance value.

Acknowledgment

This paper is supported by the Tianjin Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (Grant No. TJGL17-010).

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