The dissertation examines factors influencing nonprofit organizations' contribution to collaborative governance for climate change adaptation and nonprofit roles in the collaboration. Why an organization collaborates with others has long been a concern of scholars. However, in a majority of empirical studies, collaboration has been considered as a dichotomous concept. To fill the gap, this study considers organizations' contribution to collaboration, i.e., collaboration level in terms of power, joint activities, human resource, funding, and information sharing. To understand contribution of nonprofits to collaboration for climate change adaptation, this research employs the institutional collective action framework suggesting that organizations work together when expected benefits are greater than collaborative risks. Survey data from 101 nonprofit private organizations (beyoungri mingan danche) in South Korea, which are legally defined in the Assistance for Nonprofit, Nongovernmental Organizations Act, are analyzed. Finding is that government funding and social relationship are strongly associated with nonprofit contribution to collaboration, highlighting that the financial stability of nonprofit organizations and mutual trust among entities based on routine interaction are critical motives for nonprofit collaboration. Finding also reveals that Korean nonprofits mainly play a role as social capital creators in climate change adaptation. The finding also highlights that Sang Bu Sang Jo …

Local government in the United States have been collaborating across institutional boundaries, collaborating with other local government to share their resources in the delivery of goods and services in their communities. Although local governments have collaborated for a long time, mixed analysis resulted on which form of government is most effective in the delivery of goods and services based on structure and stability of their financial conditions. This dissertation introduces technology as a key component in the collaborative process in implementing smart initiatives among communities. This dissertation uses surveys conducted from ICMA and Smart City Council, 2016, and a case study comparing two smart cities to test the hypotheses; which structure of government is more effective and whether an increase in financial condition encourages more collaborative efforts. The data reveals that the council-manager form of government is more efficient, however, in contrast, to the case study which indicated that both forms of government were efficient in implementing smart initiatives, however, differences in collaborative efforts were seen based on structure. The results of this analysis provide significant new information for both scholars and practitioners.

This dissertation argues that stormwater management is fragmented both at that vertical fragmentation (at the level of intergovernmental relations) and horizontal fragmentation (within the level of governments). The first essay focuses on the institutional arrangements used by states to implement stormwater management policies. Building on the race to the bottom literature, I examine the impact of the institutional arrangement centralization on state water quality in California, Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota. A five-year (2013-2018) permitting cycle was used to analyze five dimensions: formalism, coercion, education, prioritization, and accommodation.There is an inverse relationship between the quality of stormwater and the degree of centralization in the institutional arrangements adopted by state governments to implement their stormwater management policies. The second essay focuses on a local government's decision to join an inter-local agreement to comply with federal/state stormwater management policies. Building on the transaction cost framework, the study used a cross-sectional design to analyze a case study. The case study consists of 119 cities subjected to stormwater regulation requirements in northern Texas during 2017. The dependent variable is the membership of the regional inter-local agreement, and the independent variables are the number of neighboring cities and population density. Community wealth, public works spending, stormwater …