Building Child-Friendly Cities: Role of Infringement Incidents in Policy Agenda Setting

Bin Tang, Huimin Yu () and Dechen Zhu
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Bin Tang: South China Agricultural University, Guangdong Urban and Rural Public Safety and Digital Governance Key Laboratory
Huimin Yu: Guangdong Urban and Rural Social Risk and Emergency Governance Research Center
Dechen Zhu: South China Agricultural University, Guangdong Urban and Rural Public Safety and Digital Governance Key Laboratory

Child Indicators Research, 2025, vol. 18, issue 3, No 13, 1277-1303

Abstract: Abstract The protection of children’s welfare and rights is crucial to the stability and sustainable development of future society. While previous research has focused on implementing child-friendly city policies, the critical issue of policy agenda-setting for enhancing children’s rights has been largely overlooked. This study applies the multiple streams theory to analyse 20 cases of children’s rights violations from 2011 to 2023. By examining public opinion, authoritative media attitudes, think tank influence, and public protest as key variables, we investigate the interactions among problem, policy, and political streams. Using crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis, this study proposes an agenda-setting mechanism for child-friendly policies in the Chinese context, thereby enriching the application of the multiple streams theory. The findings reveal that high-profile incidents of children’s rights violations can shift government attention from passive to active engagement, accelerating the opening of the “policy window”. The emergence of child-friendly policy agendas stems from the confluence of multiple factors, manifesting a differentiated coupling trajectory predominantly shaped by the policy stream, with three distinct explanatory paths identified: the “media–public guiding” path, the “public opinion driving” path, and the “think tank leading” path.

Keywords: Infringement Incidents; Child-friendly City; Policy Agenda; Multiple Streams Theory; Crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s12187-025-10232-y

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