Effect of Leaders’ Public Leadership on Collective Action in Autonomous Villages: Evidence from the Governance of Rural Irrigation System in China

Collective action is an important way to solve the problem of the lack of management of small-scale irrigation facilities and realize the virtuous cycle of them being used and managed. Village leaders, as the core figures who lead and organize villagers to reach collective action, their public leadership is the key to influencing the collective action of participatory irrigation management (PIM). Thus, based on the micro-survey data of 723 peasant households in Ningxia, Shanxi, and Shandong provinces in the Yellow River basin of China, this paper employs the multi-group Structural Equation Model (SEM) to analyze the influence of public leadership on the collective action of PIM. The results indicate that: (1) public leadership can directly promote collective action with an effect of 0.530; (2) public leadership can indirectly promote collective action through mediating variables (cadre–mass relations, institutional trust, grassroots democracy) with an indirect effect of 0.045; and (3) the personal characteristics of village leaders can regulate the effect of public leadership on collective action. When the leaders are village elite, have a high school education or above, or are not members of the clan with major surnames in the village, their public leadership can have a greater impact on collective action. This research can be used to inform the government that public leadership needs to be considered in the collective action of the PIM.