System dynamics-based stakeholders’ impact analysis of highway maintenance systems

Highway conditions and stakeholders in highway maintenance systems (HMSs), including highway operators, government officers and users, may interact in a complex manner over time and produce propagating impacts. In this work, system dynamics (SD) was used to model such complex interactions around HMSs based on analysis of the funding strategy in China and consideration of the supervision mechanism of subsidy allocation. A causal-loop diagram describing the relationships and feedback structure of correlated factors and stock–flow diagrams that quantitatively model cause–effect relationships among the factors were developed. Validation and an illustrative application of the proposed SD model are presented. This study provides insights into how this methodology can model HMSs and evaluate the cause–effect, feedback, dynamic and long-term impacts of stakeholders on highway pavement conditions, total maintenance costs and users’ payments, with the aim of helping in the planning of appropriate HMSs from the perspectives of all stakeholders.