A study of the changing process of the conflict on a large-scale development project

Abstract

Generally, it is a difficult problem to adjust different claims of different interested parties in the process of large-scale and long-term infrastructure development projects. Various parties are often in social conflict with each other concerning the gain and loss that are brought about by the project. A mathematical model was developed to analyze such a social conflict between more than two interested parties whose attitudes toward the project tend to change along with the passage of time. The model consists of two parts. The first part depends on a game-theoretical method called conflict analysis that formulates a conflict (N.M. Frasier and K.W. Hipel, 1984; N. Okada et al., 1988). At the same time, the study focuses on a dynamical aspect, that is, longitudinal change of the psychological attitude each player has toward the project. The second part of the model deals with the change of attitude of each player by using a behavioral decision model that formulates attitude change caused by both the remembering/forgetting of an event that had triggered the project at the beginning and the social influence among interested parties The model was applied to a 35-year project in which a river mouth weir was constructed in Nagara River, Japan. It was shown that the model was useful not only in reproducing the actual process in the past but also in exploring a scenario that might have been actualized if an important parameter had taken a different value from the estimated one.