(4) T value calculation

The T value can be obtained according to the Formulas (1)–(3) as shown in Table 11.


**Table 11.** T values under different coupling regimes.

*4.3. Conclusion and Discussion of Example Risk Coupling Evaluation*

The following conclusions can be drawn from the present study:

(1) The more kinds of coupling risk factors, the greater the risk of social stability of major projects is. From the calculation results, it can be inferred that the five-factor coupling risk value (*T*<sup>4</sup> = 0.579) is greater than the four-factor coupling risk value (*T*310–*T*314), the four-factor coupling risk value (*T*310–*T*314) is generally greater than the three-factor coupling risk value (*T*30–*T*39), and the three-factor coupling risk value (*T*30–*T*39) is generally greater than the two-factor coupling risk value (*T*20–*T*29), which is consistent with the actual situation of social stability risks of major projects.


#### *4.4. Coupling Risk Countermeasure*

(1) In order to solve the risk of social-public coupling, one of the meeting points is the media. On the one hand, the public should gradually cultivate the awareness of finding the media for something. When the risks of major projects infringe upon the vital interests of the public, the public should exercise their power within the scope of the law to seek help from the media or pretend to be the media themselves. Through the official channel the network platform can be used to output information to attract attention, improve the ability of thinking and their own comprehensive quality, and strengthen the ability to screen information. On the other hand, the media should strengthen the networking and digitization of information feedback and define the social responsibility objectives of major projects. Through press conferences, Weibo interviews, large forums, and other information media, the integration of public subsidies, environmental feedback, and other data to analyze the causes of the risk of social stability, to answer questions to the public to form a good interaction.


#### **5. Conclusions**

The complexity of major projects makes them prone to have various conflicts of interest in the construction process, leading to the occurrence of group events and the risk of social stability. Based on the analysis of the risk events related to the social stability risk of major projects, the authors constructed a social stability risk coupling evaluation model to study the impact of the coupling of different factors on the social stability risk of major projects.

The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: (1) Five factors, such as government, social public, economy, society, and natural environment, are the main risk factors that affect the social stability of major projects. (2) There are many ways of coupling among the five factors, and the risk of social stability caused by different coupling modes is different, among the five factors coupling, the social stability risk caused by the coupling of the five factors of "government-public-society-environmental-economy" is the greatest risk. In addition, the "politics-public-economy-society" coupling mode among the four factors coupling, the "politics-public-society" coupling mode among the three factors, and the "public-society" coupling mode among the two factors are most at risk. (3) Overall, there is a positive correlation between coupling factors and risk probability, that is: five-factor coupling risk > four-factor coupling risk > three-factor coupling risk > two-factor coupling risk. From a local perspective, some three-factor coupling risks are higher than four-factor coupling risks, such as "government-public-social" coupling risk > "government-publiceconomic-environmental" coupling risk. (4) Based on the conclusion of social stability risk coupling evaluation of major projects, some countermeasures were put forward.

The NK analysis method is an extension of traditional analysis methods. Traditional analysis approaches do not consider the interdependence between various risks, such as the analytic hierarchy process [21] and the fuzzy method [22]. It is difficult to quantitatively evaluate the coupling relationship between various risk factors. In this study, the NK model can be used to analyze the risk value of the social stability risk of major projects coupled with different risk factors quantitatively, therefore some coupling laws of social stability risk of major projects were drawn. The research of this paper provides a method for decisionmakers to assess the social stability risk of major projects, and provides a theoretical basis for the decision-making of social stability risk management of major projects.

There are some requirements on the integrity of the data and the number of samples for the model that were constructed in this paper. Therefore, in the follow-up research, the integrity of the data can be continuously improved, the sample size can be expanded, and the calculation accuracy can be improved to make the calculation results more in line with the actual situation.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, H.Y. and P.H.; methodology, Y.T.; validation, Z.Z., Y.T.; formal analysis, H.Y. and X.Z.; investigat.ion, X.Z., Z.Z. and H.H.; data curation, Y.T.; writing—original

draft preparation, H.Y.; writing—review and editing, P.H.; supervision, P.H.; project administration, H.Y.; funding acquisition, H.Y. and P.H. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by [the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province] grant number [2021JJ30748], [Scientific Research Key Project of Hunan Provincial Department of Education] grant number [21A0207], [National University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Project] grant number [S202011532017], [National University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Project] grant number [S202111532023], [Hunan University student innovation and Entrepreneurship Project] grant number [4059].

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
