Three Essays on Urban Water Management and Innovative Outcomes

Abstract

This research focuses on how local governments and organizations within urban regions in the states of Arizona, Florida, Colorado, Maryland, and Oregon coordinate and innovate. It investigates how diverse individual, network, and regional drivers influence decisions regarding the adoption of innovations and coordination with other stakeholders. This research mainly uses the Local Public Economies (LPE) framework that explains regional governance in the provision of services. It also relies on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), which explains policy change and collective action. This research complements these and uses them to explain regional coordination through the lenses of network formation and collective action, in order to overcome common dilemmas. This work presents three empirical analysis that focus on different aspects of water management and innovation as policy change. These studies contribute to the understanding of participants in Local Public Economies, and also the importance of policy networks and coalitions in fostering innovation. The first analysis focuses on network formation across the regions. It uses survey responses and network analysis to investigate the different organizational characteristics and network structures, for example, how coalitions enhance tie formation for innovations. The second study investigates the type of innovations adopted across regions. It finds that they are the result of experimentation and that organizational structures correlate with the type of innovations. The third analysis investigates network formation in the State of Arizona across diverse coordination structures. It finds that perceptions of stakeholders about problems, uses of information, and their opinions of others are significant in tie formation. These efforts collectively add to discussions about policy change and coordination for innovation.