Networked environmental governance: formal and informal collaborative networks in local China

With the recent trend toward collaborative governance, governmental and nongovernmental actors are actively engaged in the environmental governance in China, forming formal and informal networks in this process. While existing research has mostly examined the formation of either formal or informal networks, few studies have examined the influence of formal networks on the formation of informal networks. This article examines the collaborative environmental governance network in China by studying the relationship between formal networks and informal networks. We conduct the research in the empirical context of local water governance in Dongguan city of Guangdong province, China. With survey data collected from 31 municipal departments, 32 town governments, 9 water-related private business and 5 NGOs, we test the hypothesis with Quadratic Assignment Procedure (QAP) regression analysis. The results indicate that formal network does affect and contribute to the formation of informal network, and actors within the formal network are more likely to build informal relationships in environmental governance.