Diverse Property-Rights Structure Impacts on Urban-Rural Public Open Space (POS) Governance: Sabah, Malaysia

Minuscule discussion of research on institutional property-rights structure has rudimentarily determined the POS governance (usage and management) and its quality. Thus, two objectives are highlighted; (i) to examine Sabah's current practice in urban-rural POS governance and (ii) explore the POS' social dilemma that tied in with such institution. Reviews of interdisciplinary analytic perspectives, case study, documents and content analysis on semistructured interviews (governmental opinions) were performed. The practice with diverse rights structure is perceived as property-rights tragedy by virtue of numerous predicaments, which ensue in sub-optimal POS and quality of life issues. Therefore, re-engineering of urban-rural POS market via dynamic property rights re-assignment and contractual governance are postulated as the panacea to internalise the externalities for improved life quality. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.