Do institutions matter in neighbourhood commons governance? A two-stage relationship between diverse property-rights structure and residential public open space (POS) quality: Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah, Malaysia

Abstract

Despite the existing literature regarding institutional influence on traditional commons, there is still a comparative dearth of research that theorises property-rights structure and its impact on contemporary commons. This is particularly true for public open space (POS) governance: its management and utilisation and hence its quality, of which underinvestment and overexploitation leads to increasingly negative externalities and outcomes. An interdisciplinary study is employed here to depict the relationships of diverse property-rights structure attributes -POS title existence, community existence, POS title Do institutions matter in neighbourhood commons governance? 295 transfer and POS site handing-over period to local government -with quality of residential POS. A cross-sectional survey via direct structured observation with a POS quality audit tool was conducted to collect a randomly stratified sample of 155 Country Lease (CL) POS and entire 22 Native Title (NT) POS, from the districts of Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah, respectively. Archival search and document analysis on data of property-rights attributes were executed as well. Next, 2-stage Pearson's Chi-Square ( c 2 ) and Lambda (λ) with Proportional Reduction Error feature analyses were performed. Results showed that only these three property-rights attributes -title deed existence, community existence and POS site handing-over period to local government-are significantly associated with POS quality at significance level (p≤0.05). It is found that, although POS with title deed and community's involvement might not contribute to good quality, these attributes were likely to provide better quality. On the other hand, it is found that the more recent the POS site handing over to government, the higher the likelihood of good POS quality and vice versa. Such empirical findings prima facie infer that: (i) current local property-rights structure does matter in contributing to POS condition, particularly the effective management right which likely leads to better POS quality; (ii) the present state-property regime in POS governance is adversarial; and (iii) the importance of an interim privatisation and communal regimes leads to a better POS. Thus, these may provide policy insights by encouraging public officials to consider reengineering the POS market via an adaptive property-rights re-alignment paradigm in the interest of addressing POS quality and sustainability issues, which warrant further research.Keywords: Governance, institutions, neighbourhood residential commons, property-rights structure, public open space (POS), quality, two-stage associations Acknowledgement: The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper.

Development and Validation of the Mexican Public Open Spaces Tool (MexPOS)

“…Although there are many available instruments to measure POS worldwide [17][18][19][20][21][22], many of them lack characteristics related to the place to be evaluated. For example, the EAPRS [18] and the BRAT-DO [17] are questionnaires used mainly in HICs, whose main characteristics are based on measuring aspects not related or not relevant to the Mexican context, such as water-related amenities, drinking fountains, and good maintenance.…”

“…Lastly, a study in 163 children (aged 8-9) found an increase of 25 min of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day if there was a playground in the POS [16]. In agreement with these attributes, various tools have been developed to assess objectively the physical aspects of the POS globally [17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

Spatial and Non-Spatial Factors Influencing Willingness to Pay (WTP) for Urban Green Spaces (UGS): A Review

“…The government should provide better quality and an adequate number of UGS with close proximity (e.g., within walking distance, 400-500m), whereas the public should use the provided amenities and facilities responsibly and courteously. Therefore, this study offers a few takeaways to policymakers (local governments) that when designing and improving the provision of urban green spaces, the above variables should be taken into account since they influence users' preferences, consumption pattern and maintenance intention towards UGS (Ling et al, 2016;Ling, 2019) as well as their satisfaction and enjoyment, which consequently affect their WTP for UGS services. Despite the findings above, the study has limitations.…”

“…However, despite the significant ecosystem services provided by UGS, the protection of UGS has been undervalued by the government due to insufficient resources in terms of budgets and manpower, thus resulting in a lack of UGS maintenance and management. This consequence adversely affects the UGS provision in terms of quantity and quality aspects; overused spaces (e.g., vandalised and misuse space) with no effective management will eventually become underused and disused (Ling, 2019;Ling et al, 2016Ling et al, , 2019. To address the above issues, sufficient public monetary contribution via taxation is suggested as an alternative to ensuring the continuity and sustainability of UGS services.…”

Commoning Experiments in a State-Corporatist City State: The Case of Hong Kong

“…Sørensen, Bryson, and Crosby (2021, 277) maintain that public value "is defined through an often messy integration and alignment of what citizens expect will make things better for themselves and their loved ones." Commoning initiatives from the communities could lead to better utilisation and sustainability of urban resources (Ling et al 2016). In this context, the resolution of the tensions between 'commons' and 'the public' becomes critical to public problem-solving and co-creation of public-value outcomes.…”