Constructing Inclusive Infrastructure Evaluation Framework—Analysis Influence Factors on Rural Infrastructure Projects of China

Abstract

The theory of inclusive growth has been widely studied. However, most studies focus on the measurement of macro-field research, and no systematic research has been carried out on the realization and path of micro-field research, especially in project management. This paper clarifies the key factors which impact the inclusive growth of rural infrastructure projects through a literature review to lay a foundation for evaluation and policy formulation in rural infrastructure projects. The analysis of factors identified by a literature review is conducted based on data derived from questionnaire results received from 135 stakeholders. The universality of 41 factors was verified by the Kruskal–Wallis test to examine whether the importance of influencing factors varies in different infrastructure types or different stakeholders. Factor analysis categorized 41 factors into seven common factors, thus, an inclusive evaluation framework for project management is constructed. The evaluation framework of inclusive infrastructure is constructed from seven perspectives. The evaluation framework is proposed for the first time in the field of rural infrastructure management, and a new evaluation system is proposed for the performance evaluation of rural infrastructure.

1. Introduction

Much research and many practical works have focused on understanding and eradicating poverty [1]. At present, poverty is still widespread, especially in developing countries [2]. Economic development has not brought about poverty reduction according to researchers who have studied the relationship between economic development and poverty [3], but another research concludes that growth is essential for the poor, but is not a sufficient condition for poverty alleviation [4]. In response to this situation, the World Bank (WB) has introduced a new theory, namely, inclusive growth [5], which is also one of the three pillar strategies formulated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) [6]. For rural development in developing countries, the Organization for Economic Co-operation Development (OECD) advocates the establishment of rural strategic objectives, such as governance, multisectoral, urban-rural linkages, and inclusiveness [7]. If the core of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is poverty reduction, the core of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should be inclusive growth, which will help shape the global economy. In fact, most countries in Asia, including China, India, and Indonesia, have set inclusive growth as the goal of economic development. There is still a serious shortfall in the infrastructure services in developing countries in Asia, where about 800 million people lack electricity and 600 million do not have access to safe drinking water. The key challenge is, therefore, to provide high-quality and efficient infrastructure systems to support more inclusive and higher economic growth. The experience of China, with its long-running rapid growth, has been a laboratory for better understanding the potential impact of infrastructure in promoting inclusive growth and poverty reduction. China’s infrastructure development has lowered transportation costs, encouraged trade and job creation, and helped shift labor from agriculture to non-agricultural activities in urban areas. This will promote inclusive growth and reduce poverty. In 2018, the rural per capita disposable income was 14,617 yuan, and urban per capita disposable income was 39,250.8 yuan in the same period in China. In rural areas of China, economic development cannot fully benefit the rural population due to the dual structure of urban and rural areas [8]. Comparatively, the key and difficult problems of poverty are still in rural areas. Therefore, China’s rural areas development should aim for the goal of inclusive growth.

In the existing research, inclusive growth theory has been applied in different fields. In the field of business, Herrera applies the theory to a new business development model [9]. With the goal of inclusion, business is the result of achieving economic growth and equity by providing resources and promoting equality of opportunity. In the field of finance, inclusive finance changes the traditional financial exclusion, which plays an important intermediary role in economic growth and poverty eradication [10]. In the field of urban planning and construction, an inclusive city has been introduced as a new urban design model [11]. In the construction of small towns, Li takes a town in the Tianjin-Hebei region as an example, and discusses the practical path of the inclusive town from the perspective of farmers [12]. In the area of community governance, Chu et al. discuss the relationship between climate sensitivity and community inclusion [13]. They conclude that climate sensitivity is closely related to community inclusion, because the poor are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which can be solved by providing infrastructure. It can be seen from the above research that the macro strategic position of inclusive growth has been confirmed, but the micro implementation path needs to be explored [14]; however, in the field of infrastructure construction and management, there is no relevant research on inclusion.

Rural infrastructure is key to inclusive growth in rural areas. To achieve inclusive growth, an inclusive rural infrastructure project is particularly important. The positive effect of infrastructure on economic growth has been generally confirmed in academic articles [15,16,17,18]. The influence of infrastructure on economy mainly focuses on the growth effect and income distribution effect. Infrastructure is a public or quasi-public good in nature, which determines that it should have the mission of improving income distribution. If market forces exacerbate income inequality, government intervention is inevitable. The crucial element of government intervention is the where the government is spending its money. Therefore, infrastructure investment plays a very important role in China’s investment-driven economic growth model. It can be seen from Figure 1 that from 2004 to 2017, both the total investment and the amount of infrastructure in rural areas were much lower than those in urbans. Therefore, the imbalance of infrastructure investment is bound to aggravate the urban–rural gap in China. Thus, in rural areas, infrastructure projects which are mainly funded from external funds are exogenous factors whose aim is to stimulate the development of those areas. In the absence of these projects, the development gap between urban and rural areas would be even more pronounced. Compared with urban residents, rural residents have a relatively low quantity and quality of infrastructure. As shown in Figure 1, rural roads, the water penetration rate, and fixed asset investment in rural areas are far from the urban level in the same period. The widening gap between urban and rural areas inhibits the sustained growth of agriculture and rural investment and hinders the right of rural residents to fair and sustainable development. Rural infrastructure is an important factor in eliminating poverty, promoting economic development, and improving equity [19]. Inclusiveness is the opportunity for everyone or groups to participate equitably in economic development and share in the fruits of economic development. Inclusive growth and inclusive development are used on different occasions and in different contexts, but their core concepts are the same [20]. Inclusive growth was defined as a multidimensional concept in the literature, that is, inclusive growth not only refers to economic growth, but also includes a series of indicators such as social equity, employment opportunities, and environmental sustainability [21]. In this study, the inclusion of rural infrastructure refers to the fact that in the whole life cycle of rural infrastructure, each individual equally enjoys the benefits brought by the development of the infrastructure.

Current managers of rural infrastructure projects usually evaluate the performance of a rural infrastructure project according to urban construction projects, failing to accurately identify specific requirements and objectives of rural infrastructure construction. Among the evaluation models and evaluation indicators of infrastructure projects, which factors in the management process of rural infrastructure projects will affect their social equity and economic benefits? What kind of rural infrastructure projects can help achieve the goal of inclusive growth? What is an important factor of inclusive rural infrastructure? With this background, this study attempts to explore the impact of rural infrastructure projects on inclusive growth in China at the micro level and to determine the key factors that affect inclusive growth to better establish and manage rural infrastructure projects.

2. Literature Review on Inclusive Factors

2.1. Definition of the Inclusive Growth

The concept of inclusive growth has been widely used in policy formulation by major international institutions such as the United Nations (UN), WB, the World Economic Forum (WEF), ADB, and OECD. However, at present, no complete consensus exists on this theory. In its Growth Report in 2008 (“Strategies for Sustainable Growth and Inclusive Development”), the WB identified inclusive development as a global goal and theme. Equity and equal opportunities are the strategic elements of sustainable growth. Inequality is aggravating with the widening of people’s economic income gap; thus, the government needs to find ways to control the degree of inequality. Ali defines inclusive growth as sustainable and equitable economic growth [22]. Creating new economic growth opportunities and ensuring that every group in society has equal access to such opportunities are necessary. Every group and individual participates in the process of economic growth and is not excluded by circumstances. Biswas [23] believes that the definition of the theory is not completely accurate in the economic aspect. Besides the economic aspect, the non-economic income aspect needs to be considered. Poverty reduction is multi-dimensional and multi-domain, and the participation of the poor in economic activities should be enhanced. Klasen [24] incorporated inclusive growth and environmental sustainability into ADB’s “2020 Strategy”, which emphasizes that high-speed and stable economic growth will enable more people to participate in the economic process. Zhao [25] summed up the definition of inclusive growth with the method of literature induction, and it can be summarized into four aspects, namely, economic development, equal opportunities, fair efficiency, and participation and sharing.

Although no clear definition of inclusive growth exists, researchers define it as “inclusive growth, which emphasizes ensuring that the economic opportunities created by growth are available to all—particularly the poor—to the maximum possible extent” [5]. According to the above literature analysis, this study defines the core concepts of the inclusive concept in three aspects, namely, social equity, economic development, and environmental sustainability (Figure 2).

2.2. Influencing Factors of Rural Infrastructure Projects on Inclusive Growth

A systematic literature research process was used to identify influencing factors. It includes the following three steps (Figure 3). In the first stage, we conducted a comprehensive search through “title/abstract/keywords” to find the literature related to this topic, the key words including “inclusive”, “inclusive growth”, and “inclusive development”. Scoups, Web of Science, and CNKI were used as the main databases in this study. Through the first step, more than 1680 documents were identified. In the second stage, the primary literature was identified and screened. According to the search results, 185 literatures were identified by the title and abstract. In the third stage, the scope was finally narrowed down to key literatures especially related to infrastructure, sustainable construction, organizational equity, and social influencing factors through a full-text review method, and 44 publications were obtained for further analysis.

Stein Hansen [26] discussed the contribution of ADB’s road and energy projects to inclusive growth for the first time. However, in the current literature, systematic research on the impact of infrastructure projects on inclusive growth at the micro level is lacking. The realization of a goal must establish multi-level goals and link the local level with the design and policy implementation process of low and high levels to establish the connection between micro and macro [27]. Inclusive growth belongs to the macro areas, and no clear definitions or indicators are present to monitor the progress of inclusive growth at national, project, or program levels. Klasen [24] suggested adopting monitoring methods at the national and project levels, believing that such measurements can achieve inclusive growth.

If the principle of inclusiveness is considered in the whole life cycle of infrastructure projects, then infrastructure projects can produce positive outcomes. In view of the three dimensions, namely, economic development, social equity, and environmental sustainability embodied in inclusive growth, defined above, the literature will examine the impact of rural infrastructure projects on inclusive growth which will include two levels: the outcome and project levels.

2.2.1. Outcome Level

At the outcome level, from the perspective of the public sector, the focus of infrastructure spending (regardless of the source) is to improve the output and widen the range of the national economy. The aim is to give countries or regions a comparative advantage. Infrastructure development must be linked to favorable macroeconomic results (competitiveness, scalability, and profits), but the contribution of basic development to the improvement of the social dimension is also very important. Investment in rural infrastructure can promote the development of the rural economy and society.

Environmental sustainability is widely discussed in the field of construction. The term of environmental sustainability was coined and offered the world a new perspective on how to address the dilemma of advancing economic development while protecting environmental systems and enriching the quality of life for this and future generations. The construction field has attracted more attention than other ordinary industries due to the large consumption of natural resources. Vulnerable groups are particularly susceptible to risks, such as climate change, income inequality, unemployment, lack of basic services, or access to health and education, compared with other groups. In this study, we define the rate at which a community returns to its pre-perturbation state following a system-wide perturbation as resilience. The development of projects must consider environmental sustainability and resilience.

The list of potential factors affecting inclusive growth is obtained through a comprehensive literature review. Finally, 25 outcome level factors are identified, referring to

Table 1. Outcome level factors in the literature review.

No.	Factor Name	Source
I1	Promote the economic development of the area where the facility is located.	[28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36]
I2	Reduce the cost of agricultural production	[30,34,37,38,39]
I3	Improve the efficiency of agricultural production	[40]
I4	Promoting the development of non-agricultural industries	[41]
I5	Increase the non-agricultural income of farmers	[39]
I6	Reduce the living cost of farmers	[29]
I7	Narrow the gap between urban and rural areas	[28]
I8	Employment effect	[28,30,31,32,33,35,36,39]
I9	Improve the local cultural and educational level	[34]
I10	Improving the living standards and quality of the local population	[28,29,30,31,32,35,37]
I11	Promoting gender equity	[23]
I12	Provide services to farmers	[28,30]
I13	Ability to provide supporting facilities	[34,36,39,42]
I14	Accessibility	[29,30,33,34,38,39,43]
I15	Affordability	[31,34,35,38,39]
I16	Equality of opportunity	[28]
I17	Promote the popularization and progress of science and technology	[32,37]
I18	Poverty reduction	[28,34]
I19	Have an impact on the natural landscape	[42,44,45,46]
I20	Biodiversity protection	[33,35,36,42,44,47,48]
I21	Reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions	[28,34,39,44]
I22	Climate change sensitivity	[35,36,44,49]
I23	Conservation and Utilization of Natural Resources	[28,30,34,36,38,42,44,48]
I24	Land occupation	[28,30,38,44,48]
I25	Resist natural disasters	[33,39,49]

, and 16 project level factors are identified, referring to

Table 2. Project level factors in the literature review.

No.	Factor Name	Source
I26	Stakeholder Participation	[28,33,36]
I27	Stakeholder satisfaction	[28,34,36]
I28	Fairness in project decision making	[36]
I29	Fair distribution of project income	[36]
I30	Indiscriminate employment	[28,33,35,36]
I31	Technological innovation	[28,33,36,37]
I32	Public participation	[31,33,43]
I33	Safety and health at work	[28,31,33,42,50]
I34	Realization of function	[33]
I35	Adopt appropriate standards	[28,32,35,43]
I36	Project financial mode	[28,32,33,35,36,43]
I37	Economic income	[27,28,29,30,32,44]
I38	Life Cycle Cost	[28,30,34,39,43,45,48]
I39	Financial affordability	[36,43]
I40	Environmental protection measures	[28,30,31,39,43,44]
I41	Construction efficiency	[43,44,50]

.

2.2.2. Project Level

In the dimension of project management, the participation of project stakeholders and project management methods will also impact inclusive growth. In this dimension, stakeholder activities, project economy, and project quality will have an impact on inclusive growth.

3. Methodology

The objective of this study is to analyze the influencing factors of rural infrastructure inclusiveness. This research will further decompose this research objective into three research questions, and carry out research through three methods. The three research questions are:

Q1: What factors have an impact on rural infrastructure inclusiveness?

Q2: Are there significant differences in the importance of influencing factors in different types of infrastructure? Do different stakeholders have different understandings of the importance of factors?

Q3: How can the influencing factors be grouped and what latent variables are formed?

For the first question, a comprehensive literature review will be conducted, and for the second question, a Kruskal–Wallis test will be used. For the third question, factor analysis will be used, and the map of methodology is shown in Figure 4.

3.1. Questionnaire Survey

In this study, structured online questionnaires were used to collect sample data. The content of this questionnaire consists of three parts. The first part comprises an explanation of the research background and a definition of key concepts. The second part states the importance of influencing factors for inclusive growth of rural infrastructure, which is collected by 5-point Likert scale. The third part asks for the interviewee’s personal information to determine the interviewee’s personal industry experience and institutional situation, the relevant working years of engaging in rural infrastructure work, and involvement in the various types of rural infrastructure industries. A total of 300 questionnaires were sent out, 140 were recovered, and 5 invalid questionnaires were removed. All factor questionnaires were divided into 5 points, and the filling time was significantly less than the normal filling time. The actual valid questionnaires were 135, and the recovery rate of valid questionnaires was 45%, reaching the level of similar studies [51].

The research objects selected were experts involved in rural infrastructure, from government agency, investment company, operation organization, construction organization, design company, consultancy, and research institution. In order to select appropriate experts to participate in the investigation, this study selected the objective sampling method and the snowball sampling method for sampling. The purpose sampling method was selected because of the author’s work experience in the field of infrastructure, and some groups could be subjectively selected as research objects through relevant work experience. However, in order to increase the number of respondents as much as possible, snowball sampling was also adopted, by first interviewing a representative expert, and then being recommended by the visitor, and then interviewing a second person, and then being promoted by the second person to interview a third person, and so on, gradually increasing the number of respondents.

The 135 interviewees participating in this study were from different units and institutions, detailed information is listed in Figure 5. Before analyzing the questionnaire data, testing the Cronbach’s Alpha was necessary. The Cronbach’s Alpha in this study was 0.95, and when the value is above 0.8, the reliability is extremely high [52].

3.2. Important Factors Ranking

In order to determine the relative importance of different influencing factors on the rural infrastructure inclusiveness, this paper adopted mean ranking to determine the relative importance of a factor. The relative importance index is adopted in the literature of determining the importance of factors of rudder [53]. Its calculation formula is as follows:

$$RII={{\displaystyle \sum }}_{i=1}^5\frac{i\times x_i}{5\times N}$$

(1)

$RII$ indicates the relative importance of a factor;

$i$ represents the rating level of the factor ($1\le i\le 5$);

$x_i$ represents the number of samples with grade among all samples;

$N$ represents the total sample size.

Since 5 subscales are used in the questionnaire, the threshold of important factors is 3. When the RII value of a factor is above 3, it indicates that the factor is an important factor; otherwise, it is a non-important factor. In the sorting process, when the mean values of two or more factors are the same, the standard deviation of factors is used to rank the second order, and the one with the large standard deviation is ranked first.

3.3. Kruskal–Wallis Test

This study needed to determine whether there were significant differences in questionnaires among different groups. Significant differences can be identified by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) or non-parametric test. One-way ANOVA usually requires that sample distributions follow normal distribution, while non-parametric test does not. So, first, they were put through Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (K–S test) to test the distribution of the samples. However, SPSS 23 detection p values of all factors were less than 0.05, which means the samples did not follow a normal distribution. Therefore, non-parametric estimation method Kruskal–Wallis tests (K–W test) were used to examine differences among different groups. Kruskal–Wallis test hypotheses are Formulas (2)–(4). $H_0$ indicates that the means of all the samples are the same, $H_1$ indicates that the mean of at least one sample is statistically different from the others. Significance level settings for tests were 0.05.

$$H_0:{\mu }_1={\mu }_2=\cdots ={\mu }_k$$

(2)

$$H_1:{\mu }_i\ne {\mu }_j$$

(3)

$$H=\frac{12}{N\left(N1\right)}{{\displaystyle \sum }}_{j=1}^k\frac{R_j^2}{n_j}-3\left(N+1\right)$$

(4)

$N$ represents the total sample size;

$n_j$ the observed number of the j sample;

$K$ represents sample size;

$R_j$ represents the sum of the means in the sample.

3.4. Factor Analysis

Factor analysis is used to reduce the dimension of factors, thus realizing the goal of classifying numerous influencing factors into several internal interrelated factor groups. The basic idea is used to classify the related variables into the same category, whereas the correlation between different categories of variables is relatively low. Factor analysis aggregates variables with high correlation through dimension reduction, which facilitates the extraction of easily explained features and reduces the number of variables to be analyzed, as well as the complexity of problem analysis.

To perform factor analysis, the suitability of the data must first be detected. Factor analysis in this paper was performed using IBM SPSS 23. Through the analysis of 135 valid sample data, the KMO test coefficient was determined to be 0.878, which is greater than the recommended critical value of 0.6, thereby indicating that factor analysis is appropriate. The significance level of Bartlett spherical test was 0.000 (less than 0.05), which indicates that the test is significant, thus negating the zero assumption that the correlation matrix is the unit matrix. A significant correlation was found among the influencing factors, as shown in

Table 3. KMO and Bartlett test.

Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy	0.878
Bartlett’s test of sphericity	$\mathrm{Approx}.\times$2	3531.015
	df	820
	Sig.	0

. Through the above statistical analysis, it can be concluded that using factor analysis to analyze the sample data is feasible and reasonable.

4. Research Findings and Discussion

4.1. Identification of Important Influencing Factors

The ranks of importance were given by the respondents in the questionnaire. The RII value of all factors was greater than three, and its variation range was 3.41–4.56. From the overall score, all the 41 influencing factors identified by the literature review in this paper were considered as important influencing factors (

Table 4. Factor RII value and ranking.

Factor Code	Factor Name	$\mathit{R}\mathit{I}\mathit{I}$ Value	Standard Deviation	Rank
I1	Promote the economic development of the area where the facility is located.	4.56	0.631	1
I10	Improving the living standards and quality of the local population.	4.41	0.650	2
I7	Narrow the gap between urban and rural areas	4.34	0.714	3
I2	Reduce the cost of agricultural production	4.27	0.737	4
I3	Improve the efficiency of agricultural production	4.27	0.717	5
I39	Financial affordability	4.24	0.682	6
I40	Environmental protection measures	4.22	0.709	7
I13	Ability to provide supporting facilities	4.21	0.716	8
I26	Stakeholder Participation	4.20	0.621	9
I23	Conservation and Utilization of Natural Resources	4.18	0.845	10
I34	Realization of function	4.18	0.668	11
I4	Promoting the development of non-agricultural industries	4.17	0.758	12
I41	Construction efficiency	4.16	0.682	13
I38	Life Cycle Cost	4.16	0.671	14
I29	Fair distribution of project income	4.15	0.697	15
I35	Adopt appropriate standards	4.14	0.745	16
I18	Poverty reduction	4.12	0.829	17
I36	Project financial mode	4.10	0.794	18
I37	Economic income	4.10	0.785	19
I25	Resist natural disasters	4.10	0.756	20
I27	Stakeholder satisfaction	4.10	0.683	21
I28	Fairness in project decision making	4.08	0.702	22
I9	Improve the local cultural and educational level	4.07	0.908	23
I32	Public participation	4.07	0.775	24
I14	Accessibility	4.05	0.746	25
I15	Affordability	4.02	0.758	26
I31	Technological innovation	4.01	0.819	27
I5	Increase the non-agricultural income of farmers	4.01	0.768	28
I19	Have an impact on the natural landscape	4.00	0.810	29
I33	Safety and health at work	3.97	0.819	30
I8	Employment effect	3.96	0.850	31
I17	Promote the popularization and progress of science and technology	3.94	0.896	32
I16	Equality of opportunity	3.87	0.777	33
I6	Reduce the living cost of farmers	3.87	0.960	34
I12	Provide services to farmers	3.86	0.848	35
I24	Land occupation	3.78	0.952	36
I21	Reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions	3.72	0.911	37
I20	Biodiversity protection	3.66	1.023	38
I22	Climate change sensitivity	3.64	0.959	39
I30	Indiscriminate employment	3.61	0.889	40
I11	Promoting gender equity	3.41	1.025	41

), which further verifies the reliability and feasibility of the important influencing factors identified in this paper.

Analyzing the results of the questionnaire can reflect the problems and trends of China’s rural infrastructure management. First of all, from the overall sample, among the top ten factors, there are seven factors related to the outcome level, and three factors related to the project level. The top five factors are all factors related to the outcome level, that is, related to the social and economic impact brought by rural infrastructure. “Promote the economic development of the area where the facility is located” (I1), “Improving the living standards and quality of the local population” (I10), and “Narrow the gap between urban and rural” (I7) are the three factors are on the top of the list, which are usually considered as the important influencing factors by the other literatures.

Among the bottom 10 factors, I22, I30, and I11 were the three most unimportant. Among the three factors with lower importance, there is one influencing factor related to the outcome level, and two influencing factors related to the project level. From this aspect, it can also be considered that the influence brought by rural infrastructure construction will be more important than the influence generated in the construction process. While in the process of urban infrastructure construction, many enterprises emphasize “indiscriminate employment” and “gender equality”, but in the construction of rural infrastructure, these two factors are low-ranking because these enterprises, which participate in rural infrastructure construction, are small businesses. Compared with large enterprises, small enterprises do not have a complete social responsibility management system.

To sum up, among the top ten indicators, seven indicators are related to economic growth. Infrastructure investment is always a powerful engine driving China’s GDP. Infrastructure has also brought great development to the social life. Therefore, the consideration of economic growth brought by rural infrastructure is still the focus of attention. Among the last ten indicators, the index of environmental sustainability occupies four, which shows that the environmental impact brought by infrastructure construction has not been fully paid attention to by all sectors.

4.2. Universality Analysis of Factors

4.2.1. Difference in the Importance of Factors Caused by Infrastructure Type

As this study hopes to establish a general factor of rural infrastructure inclusiveness, it is necessary to examine whether the importance of influencing factors varies in different infrastructure types. According to the feedback results of the questionnaire, rural infrastructure is divided into eight categories. These are rural roads, rural power, rural waste treatment, rural clinics, rural telecommunications, rural water conservancy and irrigation, rural drinking water facilities, and rural schools.

Hypothesis 1 (H1).

There are significant differences in the importance of influencing factors in different types of infrastructure.

The Kruskal–Wallis and significance level of each group are shown in

Table 5. Results of Kruskal–Wallis test.

Factor Code	Variance in Different Stakeholders		Variance in Different Infrastructures
	$\mathit{K}{\mathit{w}}_1\mathbf{Value}$	${\mathit{P}}_1\mathbf{Value}$	$\mathit{K}{\mathit{w}}_2\mathbf{Value}$	${\mathit{P}}_2\mathbf{Value}$
I1	8.012	0.332	9.365	0.227
I2	8.148	0.320	8.108	0.323
I3	8.979	0.254	5.620	0.585
I4	3.921	0.789	4.808	0.683
I5	7.857	0.345	4.488	0.722
I6	17.865	0.013	6.970	0.432
I7	14.136	0.049	7.460	0.383
I8	6.476	0.485	6.045	0.535
I9	3.909	0.790	6.154	0.522
I10	9.505	0.218	4.339	0.740
I11	6.589	0.473	7.086	0.420
I12	12.146	0.096	9.080	0.247
I13	12.967	0.073	4.514	0.719
I14	7.477	0.381	3.752	0.808
I15	5.549	0.593	7.661	0.363
I16	3.724	0.811	6.246	0.511
I17	7.180	0.410	5.460	0.604
I18	14.215	0.047	1.161	0.992
I19	9.000	0.253	1.704	0.974
I20	11.163	0.132	6.125	0.525
I21	7.300	0.398	3.271	0.859
I22	7.988	0.334	1.489	0.983
I23	6.602	0.471	4.408	0.732
I24	12.152	0.096	12.477	0.086
I25	7.686	0.361	2.217	0.947
I26	3.724	0.811	2.921	0.892
I27	4.430	0.729	5.968	0.544
I28	15.210	0.033	4.887	0.674
I29	8.397	0.299	4.637	0.704
I30	8.697	0.275	2.924	0.892
I31	18.157	0.011	7.593	0.370
I32	7.556	0.373	6.719	0.459
I33	7.349	0.394	7.820	0.349
I34	8.868	0.262	4.875	0.675
I35	5.404	0.611	8.890	0.261
I36	10.856	0.145	7.761	0.354
I37	14.822	0.038	5.173	0.639
I38	17.949	0.012	3.240	0.862
I39	6.462	0.487	2.289	0.942
I40	7.266	0.402	3.004	0.885
I41	9.108	0.245	3.918	0.789

, and the p values of all factors are greater than 0.05, indicating that the hypothesis has been rejected; that is, there is no significant difference in the cognitive order of 41 influencing factors in different rural infrastructures. Therefore, these influencing factors apply to all types of rural infrastructure selected in this study.

4.2.2. Difference in the Importance of Factors Caused by Different Stakeholders

It can be concluded from practice that the same important factor is of different importance to different stakeholders. Rural infrastructure projects involve multiple stakeholders. The main stakeholders involved in rural infrastructure projects include government agencies, investment companies, operation organizations, construction organizations, design companies, consultancies, and research institutions. There are seven categories of different stakeholders.

Hypothesis 2 (H2).

Different stakeholders have different understandings of the importance of factors.

After the calculation of significance levels, Kruskal–Wallis and significance levels among each group were shown in Table 5. It can be seen from the Table 5 that there are significant differences in seven factors among the forty-one indicators. The main cognitive differences under factor (I6), (I7), and (I28) come from the government and research institutions. Among the seven factors, “life-cycle cost saving” (I38) has the greatest cognitive difference, which mainly comes from construction organizations, research institutions, investment companies, and government agencies. Therefore, when adopting evaluation criteria, it is necessary to pay attention to the selection of appropriate evaluation principles by different evaluation objects in the selection of the above factors.

4.3. Factors Grouping

According to the setting that the eigenvalue was greater than one, a total of nine factor groupings were extracted through principal component analysis, and the explanation rate of nine factor groupings to all factors was 68.776%. The explanation rates of each factor are as follows: Factor groupings 1 (34.543%); Factor groupings 2 (8.580%); Factor groupings 3 (6.333%); Factor groupings 4 (4.109%); Factor groupings 5 (3.655%); Factor groupings 6 (3.267%); Factor groupings 7 (3.148%); Factor groupings 8 (2.593%); and factor groupings 9 (2.547%), as detailed in Figure 6.

The loading of each factor in every component was determined through factor rotation. When the factor load value was greater than or equal to 0.5, it indicated that there was a large correlation between factors and factor groups, which was also commonly adopted by other studies. Through the factor rotation matrix, the final rotation factor matrix is shown in

Table 6. Component transformation matrix.

Factors	Factor Groupings
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
I1								0.778
I2								0.670
I3								0.569
I4					0.664
I5					0.748
I8					0.526
I12					0.570
I6							0.593
I11							0.449
I17							0.711
I7						0.694
I9						0.748
I24						0.407
I9				0.496
I10				0.502
I13				0.672
I14				0.668
I15				0.687
I16				0.484
I18		0.705
I19		0.771
I20		0.758
I21		0.720
I22		0.538
I23		0.624
I25			0.666
I26			0.663
I27			0.574
I28			0.580
I29			0.626
I30			0.552
I31			0.569
I32	0.562
I33	0.723
I34	0.712
I37	0.706
I38	0.540
I39	0.824
I40	0.773
I35									0.765
I36									0.588

Extraction method: principal component analysis (rotating convergence after 10 iterations).

. Finally, according to the result of factor analysis, all factors were grouping.

Through the detailed analysis of the nine factor groupings obtained from the factor analysis, it is concluded that all the factors basically reflect the main aspects of the influencing factors of rural infrastructure, based on an examination of the strongly loading factors and the inherent relationships among factors under each grouping. According to the results of the factor analysis and the literature review in this paper, the factors are finally divided into seven groups. (Figure 7). The seven groupings can be interpreted as follows: “G1 economic development”; “G2 society equity”; “G3 environment sustainability”; “G4 stakeholder equity”; “G5 project quality”; “G6 project economy”; and “G7 benefiting vulnerable groups”.

4.3.1. G1—Economic Development

In the dimension of economic growth, eight factors are included in this dimension. Rural infrastructure will directly impact local development. Projects, such as rural road construction and the construction of rural power grids, are highly labor-intensive. Increasing their construction can create new employment opportunities and directly increase farmers’ income [44]. Rural infrastructure also has an indirect impact on local development. For example, transportation projects will lead to the appreciation of the land around the site. Rural road construction has improved the technical level of the original roads, the pavement rate, the accessibility depth of rural roads, and the density of the rural road network, thereby improving the traffic capacity and realizing the connection of county roads, township roads, village roads, and even provincial roads and national roads. The improvement of the unobstructed capacity of rural roads has solved the problem of the difficult transportation and means of production of agricultural products. The improvement of the unobstructed capacity of rural roads has ensured the safety and comfort of travel for farmers. Farmers can choose ways to increase travel mobility, and the smoothness of rural roads improved, thereby reducing the transportation cost and time of agricultural products, ensuring the freshness of the transportation process of agricultural products, reducing the loss of goods in transit, and reducing the cost of agricultural production [54]. Rural road construction will eventually improve agricultural productivity by increasing new land cultivation or strengthening the intensive use of existing land and expanding market opportunities [55]. More information obtained by mobile phones and the reduction of transportation costs have promoted the improvement of agricultural production efficiency and production efficiency. Rural road construction brings about significant changes in traffic conditions, which increases regional location and competitive advantages in the affected areas and improves the potential for rural social development. The smooth flow of rural roads drives the development of resources in the affected areas and has social and economic impacts. The impact of changes in traffic conditions has created a new demand for travel, which has promoted the development of rural industrialization and industrialization. The development of tertiary industries, such as commerce and service industries, has a typical transmission impact to promote the development of non-agricultural industries [56]. Farmers have more access to other goods and services and non-agricultural employment opportunities, thereby increasing farmers’ non-agricultural income. Sewage and garbage treatments have improved the appearance of villages in rural areas, attracting new consumption patterns related to tourism and increasing non-agricultural income. Under the condition that the income level of farmers remains unchanged, the purchasing power of farmers will greatly improve. The popularity of the Internet and mobile terminals enables farmers to enjoy products with the same market price as in cities without an additional cost. The low supply of tap water makes it unnecessary for farmers in water-deficient areas to dig wells to obtain water and to find water sources, thus directly reducing the living cost of farmers [55]. Water systems are key factors for villages in rural area, and they can improve the sustainability of villages [57,58].

4.3.2. G2—Society Equity

Infrastructure development itself can be a powerful source of domestic employment. It can create jobs when development is completed and throughout the span of the project life cycle. Social inclusion in the area of labor market opportunities is based on the creation of new jobs (project development, provision of infrastructure services, and the operation and maintenance of infrastructure) and equal opportunities regardless of gender and/or disability. The International Labor Organization (ILO) [59], in its work on post-tsunami infrastructure rehabilitation projects in Aceh and Nia’s (Indonesia), noted that up to 2200 working days could be created per kilometer of rural road rehabilitation. New infrastructure developments improve access to the labor market and expand the scale of business to create job opportunities [60]. The report released by WB shows that in close relation to the development infrastructure of rural technical and vocational education in China, the share of non-agricultural income in the net income of rural households also increased from 22.3% in 1990 to 52.4% in 2004 [61]. The changes in the time allocated for different activities show that high-quality infrastructure provides more opportunities for non-agricultural workers. A lack of electricity can lead to longer working hours, which in turn changes the total working hours of the family [60]. Investment in rural education, culture, health care, and other infrastructure projects can fundamentally improve the comprehensive quality of rural laborers, improve the efficiency of labor production, and realize the sustainable development of rural areas. Before rural road construction, some farmers, especially those in remote areas, did not have access to schools. Children could not receive compulsory education or dropped out of school from time to time due to inconvenient transportation. Even if the government has greatly increased its investment in cultural education in rural areas by enforcing laws and regulations, the number of teachers in rural areas is still low. After the completion of rural road construction, excellent teachers in cities can easily travel to and from villages due to convenient transportation. Similarly, the effective treatment of sewage by facilities and the improvement of living conditions in rural areas will also encourage more urban teachers to teach in rural areas, which will greatly improve the quality of education of children in rural areas. Many studies have shown that the quality of drinking water is crucial to the health of infants [47], and a better quality reduced child and infant mortality in less poor regions [62,63]. Some scholars have also studied the relationship between sewage discharge and the health of the elderly residents in rural areas. By matching the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) data and the sewage discharge data at the urban level and after controlling the relevant personal characteristics and urban characteristics, it was found that sewage discharge significantly reduces the health status of the elderly residents in rural areas [64].

In the new public management stage, based on the concept of accessibility, the space quality and opportunity equalities of public resources are emphasized. In the new stage of public service, attention should be given to the allocation mode that considers both fairness and efficiency. The core goal is to provide public services that are suitable for one group and do not exclude the interests of other groups, i.e., to emphasize social fairness and spatial justice. Despite high accessibility, the rural population lacks professional skills to make the best use of infrastructure services, which may be due to the lack of cognition or a lack of technical knowledge. Therefore, any infrastructure development must maximize the results of social inclusion and consider measures such as expanding the knowledge base of potential users and improving their awareness to effectively utilize infrastructure services. This will promote the popularization and progress of science and technology in rural areas.

A high degree of public participation (marked by public participation at different stages of the policy process) helps generate the necessary political will to directly solve difficult social problems and is a basic requirement for inclusive development. Involving citizens in the design and provision of public services can improve the quality and degree of the employees’ response to the needs of service recipients in offline institutions. Citizen participation in the decision-making process [65], respect for human rights [66], or protection of marginalized and indigenous communities are the bases of the concept of inclusiveness [67].

Infrastructure helps reduce poverty through several simultaneous channels including the following. (1) Increasing connectivity to infrastructure services (for example, households newly receiving basic services are often much poorer than households already receiving basic services). (2) Township enterprises are established due to the construction and management of infrastructure. Township enterprises refer to market-oriented public enterprises managed by local governments. Such enterprises are collectively established by or based on rural communities such as townships and villages in China.

The operation of infrastructure projects often assumes that women and men will benefit equally from the new infrastructure, but this is not the case. A study on gender inequality and household fuel choices in India shows that women in these countries often take on most of the housework, and the development of some infrastructure lets them find more economically rewarding opportunities. These findings provide favorable evidence that electricity infrastructure promotes gender equity [68].

4.3.3. G3—Environment Sustainability

Disaster risks are the highest in countries with fragile societies and high risks of natural disasters. Disaster risk management is closely related to climate change sensitivity and requires a series of cross-cutting measures, ranging from reducing risks to physical infrastructure to building individual and institutional capacities [69]. This includes the development of infrastructure in disaster-prone areas or the inability of infrastructure development to respond to the following situations [70].

Infrastructure construction requires the use of energy and the occupation of land. For example, water resources are among the most important resources that flow into any building environment to maintain human activities. As energy production is one of the most important issues in the life cycle of community development, almost all the guidelines of the US National Security Agency involve the sustainable use of energy [30]. Similarly, the construction of rural infrastructure will make more use of the existing natural resources in rural areas than urban areas due to cost considerations, which is a problem that must be dealt with in rural areas with insufficient energy development and reserves.

4.3.4. G4—Stakeholder Equity

Project stakeholders usually include contract authorizers, private investors, suppliers, customers, employees, civil society groups, and local communities [52]. If stakeholders can benefit fairly and fully from the project arrangement, a win–win situation among stakeholder is easy. The effectiveness of local government supervision will effectively promote the existing infrastructure construction and the lack of operating entities [71].

4.3.5. G5—Project Quality

Adopting new technologies: according to researchers [28], new technologies and materials need to be adopted in design and construction. Promoting a fair market environment: Only when the market environment is fair and transparent can transaction costs be minimized. The procurement of engineering equipment open to the outside world is necessary [28].

Safety and Health: The demand for safety is one of the most basic needs of human beings. Sustainable development cannot be separated from human needs and safe production. Safe production is the premise to ensure the safety and health of participants and all kinds of personnel, and it is also an important component to improve the sustainability of engineering projects. Providing opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises: The extensive privatization and expansion of township enterprises play a key role in infrastructure development and the increase in rural income. Rural road construction is conducive to the formation of local small shops and kimonos.

4.3.6. G6—Project Economy

There are three types of project financing modes for rural infrastructure [72], namely, direct government investment, self-raised construction by farmers, and Public–Private Partnership (PPP) mode. Compared with the first two modes, PPP will reduce financial pressure [73]. Only effective procurement procedures can help select the most suitable private institutions to form the project company to promote the performance improvement of PPP projects [51]. Social capital, especially in the private sector in developing countries, has been reluctant in investing in infrastructure, because the returns and risks of infrastructure lead to insufficient commercial reasons for investing in infrastructure. However, advanced financial instruments, such as mixed financing mechanisms, can attract social capital to invest in infrastructure [74]. PPPs are effective investment and operation tools to attract private investment. The participation of social capital is crucial to the scale of infrastructure, otherwise the scale of infrastructure cannot be realized solely through public funds. The quantity and quality of rural infrastructure lag behind those of urban infrastructure due to the high investment and low return of rural infrastructure. Therefore, key infrastructure development funded by the public sector and multilateral institutions will likely produce higher social returns under appropriate principles. However, PPP models usually cannot provide financial returns or risk levels that meet the minimum requirements for private sector investments. Therefore, improving the financial environment for social capital to enter the infrastructure field, such as building innovative financial and regulatory methods, can encourage social capital to increase infrastructure investment, reduce the cost of government debt, and provide a wider range of infrastructure and services to society.

The Dutch experience shows that the central government’s creation of the legal possibility for local governments to enjoy the income generated by the commercial operation of parking facilities has stimulated good cash flow for huge creative projects in this field [75], making these projects suitable for private development and operation. The initial enterprise designs a reasonable charging price, so that users are willing and able to pay for the service. In addition to charging users who provide public services, creating a positive cash flow also means being creative in identifying projects with potential profit potential [38]. In the field of transportation, international experience shows that building well-designed pay parking facilities at the right locations is a promising strategy to solve the congestion problem.

4.3.7. G7—Benefiting Vulnerable Groups (BVG)

With the popularity of the Internet and mobile terminals, farmers can enjoy products with the same market price as cities without increasing extra costs. The supply of tap water makes it unnecessary for farmers in water-deficient areas to dig wells to get water in order to find water sources. Facilities enable farmers to greatly improve their purchasing power under the condition of a constant income level. Rural infrastructure can bring the possibility of the integration of urban and rural public services and narrow the unfairness caused by regional disparities. The important task of benefiting vulnerable groups is the reduction of income inequality, which is supported by infrastructure [76]. The transport and movement of people and goods creates opportunities for the development of society as a whole by traffic infrastructures [77,78,79].

The World Bank Group’s Public and Private Infrastructure Advisory Fund (PPIAF) points out that public and private infrastructures can become part of inclusive growth solutions in five areas, as follows: (1) identifying specific inclusive needs of different genders and persons with disabilities that infrastructure services can meet; (2) eliminating gender, disability, and age bias in the legal framework of public–private partnerships; (3) including gender, disability, and age in the consultation process of experts and stakeholders; (4) inclusive gender-disaggregated affordability analysis being included at the project planning stage; and (5) including gender, disability, and age considerations in the output specifications of the private sector.

5. Conclusions

Many measures of inclusive growth exist at the national and regional levels, but monitoring at the project level is currently lacking. A complete list of factors affecting inclusive growth for rural infrastructure projects and their relative importance is presented. Through the literature review, this paper obtains a list of 41 factors of rural infrastructure projects on inclusive growth in China. Based on these data, we developed a questionnaire survey. A total of 135 valid replies were received from qualified respondents, and the importance ranking, average score, and standard deviation of each factor were determined through statistical analysis. Found by the K–W test, there is no difference in the importance of factors caused by the infrastructure type, and seven factors have differences in the importance caused by different stakeholders. Factor analysis was used to reveal the potential factor groups. The high reliability and validity of nine factor groups were obtained.

Through this study, we can draw the following enlightenment:

(1) Through the literature review, a list of influencing factors of rural infrastructure projects on inclusive growth in China has been established.

(2) Through factor analysis, the classification relationship between factors has been established, and the potential mechanism of factors after respondents was revealed through nine groups of factors. According to the factors organized into classification groups, a hierarchical structure can be established. Under the guidance of the factor grouping framework, the decisions of practitioners are guided clearly, whether in the use of mathematical models or simple personal judgment.

(3) The grouping formed by factor analysis is slightly adjusted. Finally, a model framework of rural infrastructure influencing factors on inclusive growth is formed. This model framework provides a basis for the further measurement of the monitoring and evaluation of rural infrastructure projects.

This study constructed a complete list of factors affecting inclusive growth for rural infrastructure projects. In fact, China’s rural areas are vast, and there are significant differences in the geographical terrain and cultural customs. Due to the limitations of manpower and capital, this study can only select a limited sample for investigation. Although the study proved the universality of the research results by K–W examination, it still cannot represent all the samples. In subsequent studies, rural projects in different regions should be studied according to geographical distribution.