Explaining the implementation of social impact bonds in Hong Kong through advocacy coalition change

This study examined the factors influencing the process underlying the implementation of social impact bonds (SIBs). While early research primarily emphasised the technical challenges, limited recent research has suggested that political and historical factors also influence a region’s SIB development. This paper augments the SIB literature by documenting an empirical case of SIB development in Hong Kong. Using the advocacy coalition framework, we uncovered that SIB’s development involved tension and contestation between two competing coalitions driving the discourse and how discreet coordination among the dominant coalition opposing the SIB agenda helped constrain the development. The findings underscore that a region’s SIB development likely involves power dynamics between opposing actors favouring and resisting the idea. The conceptual fluidity of SIBs enables actors to narrate what SIBs per se represent and to pursue their own coalition’s agendas.