Critical Assessment Indicators for Measuring Benefits of Rural Infrastructure Investment in China
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 17, Issue 4
Abstract
Rural infrastructure is of vital importance for agricultural growth, economic development, and poverty alleviation, particularly in developing countries such as China. In line with the implementation of a Coordinated Urban-Rural Development Strategy, infrastructure investment in China has consciously been tilted to rural areas. An urgent need exists to assess whether the investment has induced the benefits as expected. Existing research on rural infrastructure investment assessment focuses primarily on economic return while neglecting its social and ecological benefits. This paper identifies a set of critical assessment indicators (CAIs) that can be used to evaluate the multifaceted benefits of rural infrastructure investment in China. Research data were collected through a questionnaire survey given to three groups of experts, including government officers, professionals, and business practitioners who are working in China’s housing and urban-rural development sector. Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) is used to generate additional data to supplement the data set from the questionnaire survey. The fuzzy set theory, which appreciates the fuzziness of data from the questionnaire survey, is used in the selection of CAIs. The CAIs can help the local governments in China to make better decisions in investing in rural infrastructure. These critical indicators can also be generalized to provide valuable references for the investigations of rural infrastructure investment in other developing countries.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the research grants provided by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
References
Abunawass, A. M., Bhell, O. S., and Ding, M., and Li, W. (1998). “Fuzzy clustering improves convergence of the backpropagation algorithm.” Proc., 1998 ACM Symp. on Applied Computing, ACM, New York, 277–281.
Andersen, P. P., and Shimokawa, S. (2006). “Rural infrastructure and agricultural development.” 〈http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTDECABCTOK2006/Resources/Per_Pinstrup_Andersen_Rural_Infrastructure.pdf〉 (Dec. 11, 2009).
Canning, D. (1998). “A database of world stocks of infrastructure, 1950–95.” World Bank Econ. Rev., 12(3), 529–547.
Ceng, W. Y., and Huang, B. Y. (2005). “Analysis on the reliability and validity of questionnaire.” Forum Stat. Inf., 20(6), 11–16 (in Chinese).
Chan, D. W. M., and Kumaraswamy, M. M. (1997). “A comparative study of causes of time overruns in Hong Kong construction projects.” Int. J. Proj. Manage., 15(1), 55–63.
China International Engineering Consulting Corporation (CIECC). (2004). Social evaluation guidance for investment projects in China—Projects financed by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, China Planning Press, Beijing (in Chinese).
Cowles, M. K., and Carlin, B. P. (1996). “Markov chain Monte Carlo convergence diagnostics: A comparative review.” J. Am. Stat. Assoc., 91(434), 883–904.
Crystal Ball Version 2000.2 [Computer software]. (2000). Decisioneering Inc., Denver.
de Vaus, D. (2002). Analyzing social science data, SAGE Publications, London.
Dong, X. Y. (2000). “Public investment, social services and productivity of Chinese household farms.” J. Dev. Stud., 36(3), 100–123.
Dong, Z. K. (2008). “Change of investment in rural infrastructure in China between 1950 and 2006.” Res. Chin. Econ. History, (3), 29–37 (in Chinese).
Fan, S. G., Hazell, P., and Thorat, S. (2000). “Government spending, growth and poverty in rural India.” Am. J. Agric. Econ., 82(4), 1038–1051.
Fan, S. G., and Pardey, P. G. (1997). “Research, productivity, and output growth in Chinese agriculture.” J. Dev. Econ., 53(1), 115–137.
Fan, S. G., and Zhang, X. B. (2004). “Infrastructure and regional economic development in rural China.” China Econ. Rev., 15(2), 203–214.
Finetti, B. D. (1992). “Foresight: Its logical laws, its subjective sources.” Breakthroughs in statistics, S. Kotz, and N. L. Johnson, eds., Springer-Verlag, New York, 134–174.
Fox, W. F., and Porca, S. (2001). “Investing in rural infrastructure.” Int. Reg. Sci. Rev., 24(1), 103–133.
Han, J. (2003). “Coordinated urban-rural development strategy (CURDS) is critical to solve ‘San Nong’ Problems.” 〈http://www.cycnet.com/zuzhi/study_think/file/xxysk20030220.htm〉 (in Chinese; Feb. 23, 2011).
Holsti, O. R. (1969). Content analysis for the social sciences and humanities, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 14–20.
Hu, Z. H., and Fu, A. M. (2007). “Rural public investment, rural household’s consumption and economic growth in rural areas.” S. China J. Econ. (5), 5–13 (in Chinese).
Jacoby, H. G. (2000). “Access to markets and the benefits of rural roads.” Econ. J., 110(465), 713–737.
Li, R. (2003). “Quantitative analysis of investment in rural public infrastructure.” J. Agrotech. Econ. (2), 5–9 (in Chinese).
Lin, X. Y., and Chen, Y. X. (2006). Quantitative evaluation of infrastructure investment effect, Tsinghua University and Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing (in Chinese).
Liu, X. Y., Xin, X., and Mao, X. F. (2003). “The Impact of rural infrastructure investments on household income and expenditure in poverty-stricken area.” China Rural Surv., (1), 31–35 (in Chinese).
Lu, W. S., Shen, L. Y., and Yam, M. C. H. (2008). “Critical success factors for competitiveness of contractors: China study.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 134(12), 972–982.
Meng, Q. C., and Xu, X. D. (2008). “The empirical analysis of investment returns of rural productive infrastructure.” Yangtze River, (12), 106–108 (in Chinese).
Ministry of Construction (MOC). (2006). Economic evaluation cases of construction project, China Planning, Beijing (in Chinese).
National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). (2005). “Exploring into the coordinated urban-rural development strategy.” 〈http://www.sdpc.gov.cn/zjgx/ t20051130_52160.htm〉 (in Chinese; May 25, 2010).
National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). (2006). Economic evaluation method and parameter of construction projects, 3rd Ed., China Planning, Beijing (in Chinese).
National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). (2009). “Rural infrastructure development report (2009).” 〈http://www.ndrc.gov.cn/gzdt/W020090923423322709226.pdf〉 (in Chinese; Dec. 28, 2009).
Pouliquen, L. Y. (1999). Rural infrastructure from a World Bank perspective: A knowledge management framework, The World Bank, Washington, DC.
Rattleff, P. (2007). “The reliability of content analysis of computer conference communication.” Comput. Educ., 49(2), 230–242.
Schübeler, P. (1996). Participation and partnership in urban infrastructure management, The World Bank, Washington, DC.
Shen, L. Y., Lu, W. S., and Yam, M. C. H. (2006). “Contractor key competitiveness indicators: A China study.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 132(4), 416–424.
Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (SCNPC). (2002). “The law of the People’s Republic of China on appraising of environment impacts.” 〈http://www.law-lib.com/law/law_view.asp?id=41954〉 (in Chinese; Feb. 23, 2011).
Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), Inc. (2006). SPSS 15.0 for Windows brief guide, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Swanson, K. E., Kuhn, R. G., and Xu, W. (2001). “Environmental policy implementation in rural China: A case study of Yuhang, Zhejiang.” Environ. Manage. (N. Y.), 27(4), 481–491.
Uysal, M., and Yarman-Vural, F. T. (2003). “Selection of the best representative feature and membership assignment for content-based fuzzy image database.” Lecture notes in computer science, Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, 141–151.
World Bank (1994). World development report 1994: Infrastructure for development, Oxford University, New York.
World Bank (2006). Infrastructure at the crossroads: Lessons from 20 years of World Bank experience, World Bank, Washington, DC, 65–66.
Xu, Z. J. (1985). The method of Monte Carlo, Science and Technology, Shanghai (in Chinese).
Yager, R. R. (1980). “On a general class of Fuzzy Connectives.” Fuzzy Sets Syst., 4(3), 235–242.
Zadeh, L. A. (1965). “Fuzzy sets.” Inf. Control, 8(3), 338–353.
Zhou, H. M., and Kuang, Y. P. (2007). “Analysis of investment in rural infrastructure.” J. Hunan Agric. Univ., 8(3), 26–29 (in Chinese).
Zimmermann, H. J. (2001). Fuzzy set theory and its application, 4th Ed., Kluwer Academic, Boston/Dordrecht/London, 11–21; 133–138.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 17 • Issue 4 • December 2011
Pages: 176 - 183
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 22, 2010
Accepted: May 13, 2011
Published online: May 14, 2011
Published in print: Dec 1, 2011
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.