Multifaceted Attention Competition: The Logic of Grassroots Government Innovation Competition

As the functions of grassroots governments evolve, traditional theories of government competition struggle to explain the behaviors in today’s grassroots government innovation contests. Additionally, current research on government innovation strategies mostly focuses on specific stages of innovation and fails to distinguish between the party attributes and government attributes. Based on this, an analytical framework of "Multifaceted Attention Competition" is constructed from the perspective of interactive agents and competition for attention. Taking the street-level road cleaning innovation project on T Street as a case, this study explores the behavioral strategies and logic of grassroots governments in innovation competition. The research finds that in the process of innovation, grassroots governments aim to attract the attention of superiors, the public, and businesses, with each target dominated by different attributes of the government. Specifically, attracting the attention of superiors is dominated by party attributes, attracting public attention is led by dual attributes, and attracting business attention is governed by government attributes. This government innovation, guided by multifaceted attention competition, to some extent exacerbates resource wastage, difficulties in innovation diffusion, and collusion.