Conflict or consensus? Stakeholders' willingness to participate in China's Sponge City program

In 2015, China initiated the Sponge City Program (SCP), an integrated urban stormwater management strategy, to mitigate the paradoxical challenges of urban flooding and water shortages. Very few studies have attempted to examine the willingness to participate of multi-level stakeholders in the case of storm-water management initiatives. To address this gap in the existing body of knowledge, this study took Guyuan city, Ningxia Province, a Stage 2 pilot city located in the arid northwest region of the People's Republic of China, as a case study. Members of three key stakeholder groups were surveyed, i.e., government, commercial entities and communities, and a total of 687 valid questionnaires were obtained in the SCP. Via a logistic regression model, the results showed that: (1) the stakeholders reached a consensus during the participation process that they were motivated by personal benefits and expected to improve water usage through the participatory process; (2) the government represented the public interest by prioritizing the overall improvement of the urban water environment and improving standards of living by contributing to the program; (3) the commercial entities prioritized the acquisition of knowledge and technical issues relevant to their business operations, and expressed concerns about how these operations might be affected by stakeholder participation; (4) both the commercial and community groups were more willing to participate if they perceived that the SCP would affect their daily lives, and the general public were willing to participate for multiple reasons. This study will help to guide future studies to continuously explore the diverse factors that influence the stakeholder participation of diverse stakeholders. The findings can also benefit the design of future projects with a view to enhancing stakeholder participation. Recognizing the quantifiable benefits of the SCP, this paper demonstrates how the evaluation of diverse stakeholders' priorities and the assessment of the drivers for their willingness to participate can further benefit the implementation of sustainable urban water initiatives, as in the case of this megaproject, and their enduring success.