Modeling Multi-Stakeholder Multi-Objective Decisions during Public Participation in Major Infrastructure and Construction Projects: A Decision Rule Approach
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 142, Issue 3
Abstract
Major infrastructure and construction (MIC) projects are those with significant traffic or environmental impact, of strategic and regional significance and high sensitivity. The decision-making process of schemes of this type is becoming ever more complicated, especially with the increasing number of stakeholders involved and their growing tendency to defend their own varied interests. Failing to address and meet the concerns and expectations of stakeholders may result in project failures. To avoid this necessitates a systematic participatory approach to facilitate decision making. Though numerous decision models have been established in previous studies (e.g., ELECTRE methods, the analytic hierarchy process and analytic network process) their applicability in the decision process during stakeholder participation in contemporary MIC projects is still uncertain. To resolve this, the decision rule approach is employed for modeling multi-stakeholder multi-objective project decisions. Through this, the result is obtained naturally according to the rules accepted by any stakeholder involved. In this sense, consensus is more likely to be achieved because the process is more convincing and the result is more easily accepted by all concerned. Appropriate rules, comprehensive enough to address multiple objectives while straightforward enough to be understood by multiple stakeholders, are set for resolving conflict and facilitating consensus during the project decision process. The West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) project is used as a demonstration case and a focus group meeting is conducted in order to confirm the validity of the model established. The results indicate that the model is objective, reliable and practical enough to cope with real world problems. Finally, a suggested future research agenda is provided.
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Acknowledgments
This project is funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (71501074), the State Key Lab of Subtropical Building Science, South China University of Technology, China (2016ZB16) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Approval No. 2015BS11; Project No. x2tj/D215315w).
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Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 142 • Issue 3 • March 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 8, 2015
Accepted: Jul 30, 2015
Published online: Oct 20, 2015
Published in print: Mar 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Mar 20, 2016
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