Why Do the Public Participate in Community Regeneration Co-production? The Case of He Ping, Tianjin

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231165996
• Author: Zhang Xu’e,Wen Fenghua,Tang Zhengxia
• Date: 01 July 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231165996

Administration & Society

2023, Vol. 55(6) 1144 –1170

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997231165996

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Article

Why Do the

Public Participate

in Community

Regeneration

Co-production? The Case

of He Ping, Tianjin

Zhang Xu’e1, Wen Fenghua1, and

Tang Zhengxia2

Abstract

The public’s co-production behaviors are influenced by individual and

organizational factors. This article analyzes these factors using 2110

questionnaire data from He Ping, Tianjin. Results show that self-efficacy,

solidarity incentives, spiritual incentives and inclusive administrative culture

have a statistically significant positive correlation with public coproduction

behaviors, while the impact of material incentives is limited. In addition

to the nonlinear effect of age, middle-aged women, homeowners, middle-

income people, and the public with bachelor’s degree are more likely to

participate in community regeneration coproduction. The findings provide

theoretical and practical implications for the existing co-production theory

and public administration practitioners.

Keywords

co-production, community regeneration, self-efficacy, solidarity incentives,

inclusive administrative culture

1School of Government, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing China

2Xichang University, Xichang, China

Corresponding Author:

Zhang Xu’e, School of Government, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing

100081, China.

Email: SDZ187953@163.com

1165996AAS0010.1177/00953997231165996Administration & SocietyXu’e et al.

research-article2023

Xu’e et al. 1145

Introduction

Since the global economic crisis in 2007, co-production theory has been

revived. Up to present, public administration scholars have not reached a

consensus on co-production definitions, but this also shows the vitality of

co-production theory. Co-production of this article refers to various activities

of state actors and lay actors to create value, especially public value, at any

stage in the public service cycle (Nabatchi et al., 2017). Co-production has

the advantages of mobilizing social resources, practicing democracy and effi-

ciency, which makes it play an important role in alleviating the growing

financial pressure and responding to wicked problems. Therefore, co-produc-

tion is widely used in community regeneration (Bovaird et al., 2019; Vanleene

et al., 2018), urban governance and policy planning (Galuszka, 2019), etc.,

which shows the bright future of it.

Public participation is the key to the theory and practices of co-production.

The current research indicates that public co-production behaviors are

affected by both individual and organizational factors. Individual factors

include self-efficacy (Bovaird et al., 2014; Parrado et al., 2013), material

incentives (Alonso et al., 2019), spiritual incentives (Alford, 2009), solidarity

incentives (Thijssen & Dooren, 2016), and socio-demographic factors

(Voorberg et al., 2018). Organizational factors include administrative culture,

working attitude of public servants and public service performance (Alonso

et al., 2019). Most of these studies are carried out in the form of single case

or multiple cases, and there are very few quantitative studies. Therefore, it is

necessary to investigate the factors affecting public co-production behaviors

at individual and organizational levels.

At present, community regeneration in China is a co-production among

state, society, and market forces (Liu et al., 2022). Compared with the prop-

erty-led urban regeneration in China, communities are no longer marginal-

ized or even excluded objects in decision systems of urban regeneration. And

the public also began to participate in community regeneration with a more

proactive attitude. So why do the public participate in community regenera-

tion co-production? Besides the influence of organizational factors, how

other factors affect the public co-production behaviors? Therefore, taking the

community regeneration practices in China as an example, this article sys-

tematically discusses the factors influencing the public co-production behav-

iors from the individual and organizational levels, with an expectation to

promote the knowledge accumulation of co-production and enrich the practi-

cal connotations of co-production theory in Chinese context.

The structure of this article is as follows. Based on a brief review on connota-

tions of co-production and community regeneration, section 2 systematically