Community-Centric Model for Evaluating Social Value in Projects
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 144, Issue 5
Abstract
Increasing public participation in infrastructure projects elicits the need for a rationalized approach for quantifying value creation in the societal context. Although economic and environmental viability may be relatively easy to quantify, theories for quantitative evaluation of social performance and underlying social value creation in public infrastructure projects from a community perspective remain unexplored. This paper argues that the needs and requirements of the community should be at the core in planning for infrastructure projects. The success and failure of these projects should be intrinsically linked to the social value being created for the community at large. Addressing this knowledge gap, this paper develops a community-centric framework by considering public viewpoints at the core of infrastructure planning across a range of project characteristics. Based on social network theory, four key stakeholder networks—interest, impact, communication, and satisfaction networks—are investigated and the underlying network measures are then used to compute mathematically the social performance index (SPI) of the entire project. The SPI is then compared with a threshold value so that an acceptable level of social performance can be ensured while planning the project. The application of the framework is demonstrated in a case study project. The research contributes new knowledge in evaluation of public projects across planning, business, and construction management literature.
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Data Availability Statement
Data generated or analyzed during the study are available from the corresponding author by request. Information about the Journal’s data sharing policy can be found here: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%29CO.1943-7862.0001263.
Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges the support and participation of the key stakeholders in conducting the research on the selected case project. The author also acknowledges the support extended by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), London for providing a Research Trust Grant Award to conduct the case study presented. Dr. Stephen Pryke and Dr. Sulafa Badi from University College London (UCL) are particularly acknowledged for their participation in the RICS Research Trust Grant and their contributions in the initial social network analysis research.
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Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 144 • Issue 5 • May 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 21, 2017
Accepted: Oct 27, 2017
Published online: Feb 19, 2018
Published in print: May 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Jul 19, 2018
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