International Journal of the Commons Vol. 10, no 1 xxxx 2016, pp. x–x Publisher: Uopen Journals URL:http://www.thecommonsjournal.org DOI: 10.18352/ijc.618 Copyright: content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License ISSN: 1875-0281 Do institutions matter in neighbourhood commons governance? A two-stage relationship between diverse property-rights structure and residential public open space (POS) quality: Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah, Malaysia Ling Gabriel Hoh Teck Faculty of Built Environment, Urban and Regional Planning Department, Universiti teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
[email protected] Ho Chin Siong Faculty of Built Environment, Urban and Regional Planning Department, Universiti teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
[email protected] Ali Hishamuddin Mohd Faculty of Geoinformation and Real Estate, Department of Real Estate, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
[email protected] Tu Fan Land and Housing Research Institute, College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, China
[email protected] Abstract: Despite the existing literature regarding institutional influence on traditional commons, there is still a comparative dearth of research that theorises property-rights structure and its impact on contemporary commons. This is particularly true for public open space (POS) governance: its management and utilisation and hence its quality, of which underinvestment and overexploitation leads to increasingly negative externalities and outcomes. An interdisciplinary study is employed here to depict the relationships of diverse property-rights structure attributes – POS title existence, community existence, POS title 2 Ling Gabriel Hoh Teck et al. transfer and POS site handing-over period to local government – with quality of residential POS. A cross-sectional survey via direct structured observation with a POS quality audit tool was conducted to collect a randomly stratified sample of 155 Country Lease (CL) POS and entire 22 Native Title (NT) POS, from the districts of Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah, respectively.