Identification and Simulation of the Influencing Factors of Private Capital Participation in Urban and Rural Infrastructure Transformation Based on System Dynamics

Abstract

An important force for participation in urban and rural infrastructure transformation (URIT) is private capital (PC), which helps to emphasize the importance of government departments in effectively implementing quality urban development strategies when driving PC in order to participate in URIT in a compliant and efficient manner. This article constructs a system of factors that influence the participation of PC in URIT, which uses the analytical hierarchy process–criteria importance through inter-criteria correlation (AHP-CRITIC) combination method to quantify the comprehensive assignment of influencing factors, in order to analyze the poor effectiveness of PC participation in URIT. On this basis, combined with a logical mechanism analysis of PC participation in URIT, the evolutionary system dynamics model was constructed, and it concerned the correlation between PC’s willingness to participate in URIT and PC’s willingness to participate in each of the influencing factors. The results of the study show that (1) factors such as “return on project investment”, “tax breaks”, “level of government finance”, “project construction cost”, “mechanism for public selection of PC”, and “establishment of a special coordinating department” are the most influential factors concerning the willingness of PC to participate in URIT; (2) the “open selection of PC” and the “establishment of a coordinating department” at the level of government behavior, and “tax relief” at the level of the policy system, directly affect the willingness of PC to participate in URIT; and (3) the analysis is based on the model simulation results, combined with stakeholder theory and incentive theory. After analyzing the simulation results, it was observed that increasing the degree of implementation, regarding the “public selection of PC” and “establishment of coordination departments” among the influencing factors related to the government’s behavior, significantly enhanced the willingness of PC to participate during the final stage of the simulation. The willingness increased from 2.81 to 3.24 and 3.22, respectively. Furthermore, after doubling the “tax relief” within the policy system, the willingness of PC to participate increased from 2.81 to 3.05 during the final simulation. Finally, this article gives strategic recommendations as to how governments can incentivize PC participation in URIT, which mainly include strengthening the profitability of URIT projects, innovating the PC participation model, improving the completeness of the supporting policies, and strengthening the co-ordination of local policies. The theoretical models and research results presented in this article can provide a reference for government policy makers to encourage PC participation in URIT and provide new ideas for transformation methods concerning PC participation in URIT.