An Item Response Theory Model of Inter-Regional Collaboration for Transportation Planning in the United States

Soyoung Kim, Woo-Je Kim and Richard Clark Feiock
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Soyoung Kim: School of Liberal Arts, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul 01811, Korea
Woo-Je Kim: College of Business and Technology, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul 01811, Korea
Richard Clark Feiock: Local Governance Lab., Local Governance Research, LLC, Tallahassee, FL 32303, USA

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 9, 1-15

Abstract: Regional governments and regional intergovernmental organizations play an increasingly important role in land use and transportation planning in many countries. In the U.S., regional organizations such as metropolitan planning organizations provide regional forums and institutions to coordinate actions of local government necessary to overcome collective action problems that result from the fragmentation of local authority. Their regional scope allows them to directly address collaboration problems or broker collaborative arrangements among local governments within their boundaries. Nevertheless, the scale of regional problems often extends beyond the boundaries of these regional entities. Thus, collaboration across regional governance organizations is necessary to address problems that have multi-regional impacts, such as large transportation projects. Extant research generally measures regional collaboration based on counts of collaboration actions undertaken, but this does not account for the fact that some are symbolic, while others require resources and commitment. Drawing insights from the institutional collective action framework, we advance an explanation for how regional organizations overcome collaboration risks to participate in collaborative solutions to regional and multi-regional problems. The analysis employs a unique national survey of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and adds a novel application of item response theory (IRT) to capture differences in risk or difficulty among collaborative actions. The IRT results offer support for our ICA-based explanation of collaboration commitments. The implications of the findings for theory development and empirical study of RIGOs are discussed in conclusion.

Keywords: institutional collective action; regional governance; policy integration; local government; institutions; local government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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