Author(s)

Jyh-Harng Shyng ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Life Sciences College, Zhaoqing University, Zhaoqing, Guangdong, China

Corresponding Author

Jyh-Harng Shyng

ABSTRACT

Existing ESG evaluation research on rural PPP rarely separates cultural indicators for targeted mechanism analysis, yet entropy calculation based on 58 Guangdong rural PPP samples proves that intangible cultural heritage (S5) carries the highest weight (13.547%) among all 20 ESG indicators. To unpack the heterogeneous empowerment effect of cultural embedding across project categories, this paper divides samples into three groups: wetland park PPP, water ecological governance PPP, and rural sanitation PPP. This study adopts entropy weight decomposition to quantify the marginal contribution of S5 to overall ESG score, and uses TOPSIS coefficient inter-group difference test to compare performance gaps between projects with heritage layout and non-heritage layout. The results show that intangible cultural heritage embedding significantly lifts comprehensive ESG performance; wetland PPP gains the largest cultural premium, followed by water governance projects, while sanitation PPP shows weak cultural spillover. The channel test verifies that heritage embedding improves social trust and public participation (G5), and indirectly optimizes environmental operation input. This paper supplements the micro-mechanism of cultural elements in rural sustainable infrastructure and puts forward differentiated cultural embedding strategies for three types of PPP projects.

KEYWORDS

Intangible Cultural Heritage(ICH); Rural PPP; ESG Performance; Entropy Weight Decomposition; TOPSIS Group Comparison; Cultural Empowerment

CITE THIS PAPER

Jyh-Harng Shyng. Empowerment Mechanism of Intangible Cultural Heritage Embedding on ESG Performance of Rural PPP Projects: Weight Decomposition and Cross-Type Comparative Analysis. Industrial Engineering and Innovation Management (2026). Vol. 9, No.1, 86-91. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/ieim.2026.090109.

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