| China has built the world’s largest toll road network system.With the improvement of road network construction,the focus of toll road development will shift from construction to operation.Under the new development concept of transforming from pursuing scale development to pursuing quality and efficiency proposed by “The Outline of the Construction of a Country with Strong Transportation”,the cost reduction and efficiency increase of toll road operation has become a new mission of transportation development.The State Council encourages social capital to participate in toll road operations in a concession manner in order to give full play to the positive role of social capital.In fact,the concession mode has been implemented in China’s toll road industry for more than 30 years.Whether enterprises can improve the operation efficiency of toll roads in the process of concession depends largely on whether government regulations can effectively restrain enterprises’ speculation and motivate them to improve their efforts.However,government regulation also faces problems such as insufficient objective regulatory capacity and weak subjective regulatory awareness,which restricts the impact of concession on operation efficiency.Therefore,it is of great theoretical value and practical significance to investigate the impact of concession on operation efficiency,clarify the formation mechanism of the impact of concession from the perspective of government regulation,and formulate corresponding government regulation reform strategies to enhance the impact of concession.It provides certain reference and demonstration effect on China’ s transportation infrastructure operation.Against the backdrop,the study is carried out under the logic of “operation efficiency measurement – impact effect analysis – formation mechanism revelation – efficiency improvement path”.Firstly,the operation efficiency of toll roads with different operation modes in each province of China under the existing government regulation system is measured,and then the effect of concession mode on operation efficiency is empirically analyzed.Then,by constructing the micro-theoretical analysis framework of government regulation and conducting evolutionary game analysis,the formation mechanism of the impact of concession from the perspective of government regulation is revealed.Finally,based on the formation mechanism,the path of enhancing the impact of concession from the perspective of government regulation is proposed through configuration analysis.The main research contents and conclusions are as follows:(1)Analysis of the impact of concession on operation efficiency.Most provinces in China implement the “dual-track system” mode in which concession mode and government toll mode coexist.Based on this quasi-natural experiment,this paper empirically analyzes the impact of concession on operation efficiency.The SBM model is used to measure the operation efficiency of concessionary toll roads and government loan-repayment roads in 29 provinces of China in 2010 and 2013–2021.Based on this,the propensity score matching model is used to empirically analyze the impact of concession on operation efficiency,and then the impact of concession in different regions and Qinghai Province is analyzed.The influence mechanism of concession on operation efficiency is further tested from pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency.The empirical results show that the implementation of the concession mode in toll road operation has a significant role in promoting the overall operation efficiency of the industry.However,the advantages of the concession mode concerning operation efficiency are only significant in the eastern and central regions,and are not obvious in the western regions.Government regulation is an important means to enhance the impact of concession.(2)Revealing the formation mechanism of the impact of concession from the perspective of government regulation.From the perspective of government regulation,the impact of concession on operation efficiency essentially depends on the degree of efforts made by concessionary enterprises in reducing costs and increasing efficiency during toll road operation.Owing to the constraits of information asymmetry and bounded rationality,local governments and concessionary enterprises may be opportunistic.Therefore,a research framework of government regulation is constructed,which includes three situations: enterprise speculation and government regulation,enterprise rent-seeking and government capture,and lack of government regulation commitment.Then,the interaction mechanism of government and enterprise behavior under different government regulation situations is analyzed by means of evolutionary game model.Model reasoning shows that the efforts of concessionary enterprises are always dynamically adjusted with the strictness of local government supervision.The operation strategy of concessionary enterprises and the supervision strategy of local governments not only influence each other,but also are affected by the government’s regulatory capacity,regulatory capture,regulatory commitment and regulatory technology individually or synergistically.(3)The synergistic path to enhance the impact of concession from the perspective of government regulation.The formation mechanism of the impact of concession from the perspective of government regulation reveals that enhancing the impact effect of concession can not only start from a single factor,but also consider the synergy of multiple factors.Based on this,a synergistic configuration model of concession with six conditional variables of government efficiency,government transparency,property right structure,government credit,financial capacity and big data development level is constructed.According to the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method,this paper analyzes the necessity,sufficiency,substitutability of conditional variables and the regional heterogeneity of conditional configuration effects,and proposes three configuration paths to enhance the impact of concession,namely,technology-empowering,market-driven and comprehensive promotion paths.Each region can choose the appropriate path according to its own resource endowment,and better play the role of government regulation to enhance the impact of concession.Given the development needs of reducing costs and increasing efficiency in the concession of toll road industry,this paper systematically studies the impact of concession from the perspective of government regulation.This study not only uses the frontier method to empirically analyze the impact of concession on the operation efficiency of toll roads,but also systematically reveals the micro-formation mechanism of the impact of concession from the perspective of government regulation,and further proposes ways to enhance the impact of concession.The research not only provides decision-making reference and practical guidance for the government management department of toll road industry,but also provides theoretical reference for market-oriented operation of natural monopoly infrastructure. |
