How to resolve interest conflicts in government outsourcing of highway services? An examination with an improved GMCR model

Abstract

Government outsourcing of highway services (GOHS) has become a popular choice for the public sector who struggles to meet rising demands for highway services but with dwindling resources. However, owing to the incompatibility of objectives, preferences and values among stakeholders of GOHS, interest conflicts are inherent during the process of highway service delivery. To resolve the interest conflicts and promote the development of GOHS policy, this paper employs the graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR) method to simulate the dynamic evolution of interest conflicts among stakeholders. Particularly, text mining technology is used to extract the options of decision makers (DMs) and a segmented option weighting method is proposed to determine the preference rankings of DMs, which contributes to the improvement of GMCR method. After constructing the conflict model with the improved GMCR method, conflict analysis is conducted to find the resolutions of GOHS conflicts. Research results show that governments are suggested to supervise the third-party vendors and take incentive measures to motive contractors to deliver high-quality highway services. Under the supervision, third-party vendors are more inclined to fulfill contracts and comply with the terms of outsourcing contracts. Citizens who are highway service users should also involve in the service delivery process actively and promote the development of GOHS by evaluating and supervising. Additionally, the sensitivity analysis results indicate that the equilibrium state of GOHS conflict is highly sensitive to the DMs' relative preferences over states.