Sustainable water demand management in the hotel sector: a policy network analysis of Singapore

Abstract

Water use in the tourism industry is a vital sustainability issue in destination development. Achieving sustainable water demand management (WDM) is challenging and requires destination stakeholder collaboration for effective participatory policymaking. Taking the WDM of Singapore’s hotel sector as a case, this article applies a policy network analysis to prevailing stakeholder collaboration based on public policy documents published between 2001 and 2015. Thirty-three interconnected organisational stakeholders and 76 policy domains were identified. Longitudinal analyses revealed structural changes in stakeholder collaboration during WDM policy development. The findings also indicate that the policy stakeholders of WDM are becoming increasingly diverse, and with this expansion in stakeholder participation, the collaboration network has evolved from being simple to remarkably complex. This article also discusses the relationship between policy stakeholders and policy domains, revealing that the responsibility, available resources, and interests of stakeholders are the main factors influencing their policy preferences in this discourse. The results enrich our understanding of inter-stakeholder relationships and the dynamic relational structure of interdisciplinary policy system.