Central policy attitudes and innovation diffusion of local government: the case of China's river chief system

The central government's policy attitude will affect local governments' innovation adoption behavior, but the diffusion process is not static, which shows dynamic changes. This essay illustrates the spreading process of the Chinese River Chief System (RCS). It discusses how the factors influencing the diffusion of the RCS alter dynamically under various policy attitudes of the central government by using the segmented Event History Analysis (EHA) and Piecewise Constant Exponential (PCE) models. The results found that, under the central government's implicit policy attitude, peer city pressure and official promotion increase the probability of adoption of the RCS. When the central government's policy encourages the attitude, intra-city factors and peer city pressure affect the diffusion of the RCS. Still, official promotion is no longer an influential influencing factor. All three factors are no longer practical when the central government introduces mandatory regulations. In addition, vertical higher-level pressure and horizontal peer city pressure on adopting the RCS are competitive rather than complementary relationships. Local governments' attitudes regarding the RCS went through a path of "good governance signal-governance tool-authority obedience" under the varied policy philosophies of the central government. Local governments pay more attention to the actual circumstances in the region due to the non-mandatory central government direction, which advances the art of adopting policies. Contrarily, the central government's stipulations render the other factors' policies obsolete.