Institutional Capacity, Collaboration, and Governance Performance in Agricultural Irrigation Systems: Empirical Evidence from Rural China

This study examines how village spatial institutional capacity (knowledge resources, relational resources, and mobilization capacity) and intra-organizational collaboration jointly shape the governance of agricultural irrigation systems. Using survey data from 840 households in six provinces of China’s Yellow River Basin, we employ OLS regression, bootstrapped quantile regression and moderation analysis. The empirical results indicate that both village spatial institutional capacity and internal collaboration significantly and positively affect comprehensive irrigation governance performance. Specifically, OLS results reveal that knowledge resources (β = 0.0029, p < 0.1), relational resources (β = 0.0711, p < 0.01), and mobilization capacity (β = 0.0236, p < 0.05) significantly enhance comprehensive performance, and internal collaboration exerts a significant positive moderating effect between institutional capacity and governance performance. Furthermore, quantile regression analysis reveals a non-linear distribution of this effect: the safeguarding role of institutional capacity is more prominent in the early stages of governance, whereas the driving role of internal collaboration shows an increasing trend in the middle and later stages. This study theoretically addresses the limitations of past reliance solely on the concept of “social capital” and provides robust empirical evidence for transitioning irrigation management from traditional top-down administrative dominance to a multi-centered, participatory self-governance model.