**1. Introduction**

Major projects are the symbol of human civilization, represent the progress of science and technology of the times, and reflect the degree of economic and social development. In recent years, a number of major infrastructure facilities have been established, designed, constructed and operated in China, such as the Three Gorges Water Conservancy Hub Project, South-to-North Water Transfer Project, West-to-East Gas Transmission Project, Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, high-speed railroad network, etc. However, due to some special attributes of major engineering projects, such as the social nature, complexity, large scale, and uncertainty, the social risks caused during the construction process will seriously threaten the regional social stability. General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed at the opening ceremony of the seminar on major risks in 2019: improve the ability to prevent major risks and make efforts to resolve them so as to maintain sustainable and healthy economic development and social stability. Therefore, standing at the historical intersection of the "two hundred years" goal, in the macro context of China's social transformation and the vigorous construction of major projects, the construction of major projects should not only ensure a high-quality economic development, but also minimize the risks in order to maintain social stability.

At present, major engineering risks have been widely concerned and studied by the academic community, and a number of research results have been obtained. They mainly

**Citation:** Yan, H.; Zheng, Z.; Huang, H.; Zhou, X.; Tang, Y.; Hu, P. Risk Coupling Evaluation of Social Stability of Major Engineering Based on N-K Model. *Buildings* **2022**, *12*, 702. https://doi.org/10.3390/ buildings12060702

Academic Editor: Carlos Oliveira Cruz

Received: 1 March 2022 Accepted: 13 May 2022 Published: 24 May 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

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focus on the social stability risk factors of major projects (Xiang P C, et.al., 2018 [1]; Munier N, et.al., 2016 [2]; Zhang R, et.al., 2016 [3]; Arukala S R, et.al., 2015 [4]), social stability risk evaluation (Lou X H, et.al., 2018 [5]; Li M, et.al., 2019 [6]; Khameneh A H, et.al., 2016 [7]; Zhou H, et.al., 2015 [8]; Yang SL, et.al., 2014 [9]), social stability risk governance (Zhang W, et.al., 2019 [10]; Cui C, et.al., 2012 [11]; Tan S, et.al., 2015 [12]; Huang Y J, et.al., 2013 [13]) and other aspects. Xiang Pengcheng et.al. [1] proposed that the key risk factors of social instability mainly include poor public opinion expression channels, weak government supervision and illegal project approval procedures. Luo Xiaohui et.al. [5] conducted a social stability risk assessment of major engineering projects under the two situational modes of black box operation and information disclosure for the four stages dynamic game model, and analyzed the impact of the feedback correction mechanism of social stability risk based on the hierarchical Bayesian network model, and they proposed that there were differences in the social stability risk assessment results of major engineering projects under different situations. Zhang Wei et.al. [10] identified 6 categories and 28 factors of social stability risk of major engineering projects, calculated the comprehensive driving force and comprehensive dependence of each risk based on Fuzzy ISM model, and put forward governance priority and governance measures for various risks. The above studies have promoted the development of social stability risk assessment theory for major projects, and provide a rich theoretical framework and knowledge reserve for this paper; however, the above studies all discussed the impact and evaluation of a single risk event on the social stability risk of major projects, ignoring the joint effect of multiple risk factors. The social stability risk of major projects has many influencing factors, the risk factors are strongly correlated, and the occurrence of accidents is often caused by the coupling of multiple factors. These characteristics are in line with the risk coupling analysis theory.

The N-K model [14,15] originated from information theory and is mainly used to analyze the influence of the interaction between the internal elements of the system on the overall adaptability of the system. It is widely used in economic and financial fields, and there is still a lack of research in the field of social stability risks in major projects. Therefore, this paper constructs the social stability risk coupling evaluation model based on the N-K model, and provides a reference for social stability risk management of major projects.

#### **2. Identification of Risk Factors for Social Stability of Major Projects**

The identification of risk factors for the social stability of major projects is a prerequisite for risk assessment and governance, and a necessary step before risk analysis and measures are taken. Social stability risk assessment of major projects will face many semi-structural decision-making problems, such as the lack of decision-making information, a large amount of false information, or excess information. However, comprehensively considering the three major factors of economy, society, and natural environment, the principle of triple bottom line (TBL) provides a new idea for the identification of risk factors and a new value standard for the sustainable development of an organization or society. For this reason, through the cases of major projects and the sudden process of group incidents, this paper analyzes the uncertain factors induced by the four-stage game process between both sides of the internal game (the government and the surrounding public), as well as external environment, including economic, natural, social and other exogenous uncertainties. Based on the summary of social stability risks and potential results of major projects, the Bow-tie model is constructed according to the logical sequence of "risk factor analysis-consequence evaluation-model creation".

#### *2.1. Uncertainty Factors within the Main Players of the Game*

In recent years, the social stability risks of major projects have been on the rise [16], especially in the relevant aspects of emergency decision-making that caused mass incidents. Therefore, on the basis of the principle of protecting the vital interests of the people to the greatest extent possible, it is necessary to resolve the value conflicts of different interest groups, such as the government and the public [17]. Major project construction is a systematic work integrating multi-field management and cooperation. Different stakeholders often face great conflicts of interest due to information asymmetry, benefit unbalance, and relationship cognitive dissonance, which seriously affects the sustainable development of major projects and triggers social stability risks. The main purpose of the game between the government and the public is to maximize their own interests. In this paper, the dynamic game process led by the local government and the public is divided into four stages (as shown in Figure 1 in order to explore the uncertain factors within the main game players of the major project [18].

**Figure 1.** Dynamic game within the main players of the game. (The solid line represents the contradiction generation mechanism, and the dotted line represents the feedback correction system).

In the first stage, as major projects can promote local economic development and meet market demand, the government takes the first action and takes major projects as a decision-making node to realize investment expectations, performance pursuit, production planning, and so on. However, the public in the surrounding areas is worried that chemical products related to major projects will threaten their own safety and health, the quality of the surrounding environment, and the asset chain, and this is taken as the starting point of the game. In the second stage, the surrounding public takes protest actions as the decision-making node according to the first decision-making action of the local government and as a post-actor. When there is no reasonable channel to express their own demands or when they are unable to obtain reasonable and legitimate interest demands in all aspects of major projects, the surrounding public has to stimulate the high spirits of the masses and set off social protests. If the local government actively pays attention to the interests of the public and can communicate with the public about project risks as soon as possible, the public can understand the risk level and prevention and control measures of the project, which will help the public to accept the risk assessment conclusions of the project and form an objective perception of risks, and thus the public may abandon the protests and embrace the project [19]. In the third stage, the government must make scientific and reasonable emergency response decisions, and some governments build an effective interaction mechanism with the public to dispel public doubts; while some local governments take decisions such as reducing, relocating, or even canceling major projects to calm the social situation. In the fourth stage, the surrounding public decides whether to end the protest action so as to achieve the cooperative game according to the emergency response decision of the local government.

#### *2.2. External Environmental Factors*

Through the analysis of major engineering accident cases, it is found that there are endless cases of mass incidents caused by external environmental factors such as compensation policies, safety accidents, and environmental pollution. Therefore, external environmental factors are also an important part of the risks that threaten the social stability of major

projects. In 1997, John Elkington put forward the representative "triple-bottom-line" theory of social responsibility. He believed that the foundation for an organization to achieve sustainable development is to seek the balance of economic, social, and environmental responsibility on the basis of bottom-line responsibility. Therefore, this paper analyzes the external uncertain factors of the social stability risk of major projects based on the triple bottom line principle of "economy-society-natural environment" (as shown in Figure 2).

**Figure 2.** External uncertain factors.

Among the external uncertainties, the first is economic factors [1,16]. The construction period of major projects is long, there are many relevant interest groups, and the construction technology is complex, therefore, there are many unmeasurable risks, and it is easy to be affected by economic factors, including a change in material price, labor supply, fund management, and compensation policy.

The second is the social factors [1,16]. Based on previous literature review, this paper believes that the social factors affecting major projects mainly include the following two aspects: on the one hand, it is the risk of safety accidents brought about by major projects, such as the "five major injuries" of common safety risks; on the other hand, it is the risk caused by the destruction of the surrounding cultural landscape and customs.

Finally, there are natural environmental factors [1,16], through on-the-spot investigation and case analysis, the waste of resources caused by land development, water pollution, chemical pollution, air pollution, waste pollution, and so on, are the triggers of surrounding public protests, parades, and even mass disturbances.

#### *2.3. Building a Bow-Tie Model Based on Internal and External Factors Analysis*

The Bow-tie model is a risk management tool that organically combines fault tree analysis and event tree analysis [20]. It is a risk analysis method with strong operability and high visualization. By drawing the bow tie diagram, the potential risk factors of the accident are put on the left as the fault tree part, and the results caused by the accident are put on the right as the event tree part, and lists threats and barriers to reflect the logical development of the event, then build a graphical model. Based on the above analysis, the internal risk factors of social stability of major projects are mainly reflected in the policy risk and public risk induced by the game process between the government and the surrounding public, and the external risk factors are mainly reflected in the economic risk, natural risk and social risk generated by the external environment. Therefore, based on the traditional bow-tie model and the logical idea of "risk source-consequence-evaluation barrier setting", a series of indicators related to the social stability risk of major projects were determined through the forward and reverse push of risk source and consequence, Furthermore, the

risk countermeasures of practical value were put forward, and the bow-tie model was constructed (as shown in Figure 3).

**Figure 3.** Bow-tie model of social stability risk factors for major projects.
