Testing the stakeholders' partnership in a tourism waste management network: an ERGM approach

The exponential random graph model (ERGM) is an effective approach for testing the dynamic and local processes of a network. This paper explores the structure of stakeholders' partnerships in a tourism waste management network using high-order dependency ERGMs based on relational data obtained from a field survey in Motuo County, China. The results reveal that (1) the network has many edges, indicating a tight network; (2) the geometrically weighted edge distribution shows a high transitive effect of the network; (3) the structural effect is more significant than the attribute effect; (4) there is a good agreement between the simulation results and observations, suggesting a tourism waste network with close connections and collaborative division of labor. These findings indicate that different groups of stakeholders have been extensively involved in tourism waste management in Motuo County. The edgewise shared partners formed by stakeholders of different groups increase the information transmission efficiency of the network. The results have implications for tourism waste management, specifically for promoting sustainability transitions via network governance.