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Impact of Institutional Pressures on Socially Responsible Collective Action Behaviors for Major Water Transfer Projects

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Abstract

Public megaprojects, such as major water transfer (MWT) projects must be developed in a socially responsible manner. As such, stakeholders of MWT projects need to adopt behaviors of socially responsible collective action (BSRCA) during the entire project life cycle. Based on MWT projects, the objectives are to: examine the impact of institutional pressures to boost BSRCA, and the mediating effects of obligation to take collective action and organizational support to take collective action. The data was collected from 365 respondents who were involved in MWT projects and analyzed using PLS-SEM method. This study’s contribution to the body of knowledge is that institutional theory may be used to explain how to increase BSRCA in public megaprojects, and the obligation to take collective action could boost BSRCA further. Implications and recommendations on how stakeholders’ BSRCA may enhance water resource management are discussed.

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Data Availability

Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We are particularly grateful to the anonymous reviewers and editors for their comments.

Funding

This research is funded by Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX21_0440), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. B210203063), and the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 19FJYB004). We also appreciate the financial support from the China Scholarship Council (No. 202006710037).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Engineering Management, Hohai University, Nanjing, 211100, China

    Wujuan Zhai, Florence Yean Yng Ling, Jiyong Ding & Zhuofu Wang

  2. Department of the Built Environment, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117566, Singapore

    Wujuan Zhai

  3. Jiangsu Provincial Collaborative Innovation Center of World Water Valley and Water Ecological Civilization, Nanjing, 211100, China

    Jiyong Ding

Authors
  1. Wujuan Zhai
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  2. Florence Yean Yng Ling
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  3. Jiyong Ding
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  4. Zhuofu Wang
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Contributions

W.J. ZHAI: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Investigation, Data curation, Writing-Original Draft, Funding acquisition. F. Y. Y. LING: Conceptualization, Validation, Writing-Review & Editing, Supervision, Formal analysis. J.Y. DING: Conceptualization, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Data curation, Resources. Z.F. WANG: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Resources.

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Correspondence to Wujuan Zhai.

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Appendix. Measurement Items

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Zhai, W., Ling, F.Y.Y., Ding, J. et al. Impact of Institutional Pressures on Socially Responsible Collective Action Behaviors for Major Water Transfer Projects. Water Resour Manage 37, 4253–4269 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-023-03551-8

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