Perspective on social-ecological system framework and new institutional economics theories in explaining public open spaces (POS) governance and quality issues

There has been relatively little attention paid to the implications of property-rights structures on urban and neighbourhood commons, particularly in respect to government/state-owned public open space (POS) governance, its management and its quality. By establishing interconnections of the property-rights structure with POS governance and its quality externalities, the theory of new institutional economics, the social-ecological system framework, as well as the social dilemma theory and the commons and opportunism concepts were employed and reviewed, to synthesise a conceptual framework which can help illuminate and explain the complex nexus of an institutional-social-POS system. Findings suggested that adversarial institutional design and arrangement (e.g., maladaptive property regime, incomplete rights, and attenuated rights) and change of the property-rights system, coupled with highly positive transaction cost distributions, contribute to inefficient POS governance and management, which consequently results in a suboptimal quality and sustainability of POS. This synthesis provides policy and management insights by making public officials aware of the importance of the institutional-social-ecological system, and by making them consider a re-engineering of the POS ownership regime and its management rights via an adaptive property-rights structure assessment and re-allocation