Abstract Due to the large scale highway construction and fuel tax reform, the Chinese government is suffering from serious difficulties in the Trunk Highway (TH) management (similar to arterial highways in the US). Most concerns are related to the misappropriation of funds and over-staffing. To solve these problems, an effective approach is to employ an appropriate Finance and Personnel Management Institutional Structure (FAPMIS). This paper proposes a quantitative method to evaluate the performance of FAPMIS. FAPMISs are classified into three types based on their differences: vertical management structure (VMS), regional management structure (RMS), and hybrid of vertical and regional management structure (HVRMS). These three types are represented by three different graphical structures. Based on these structures, the authors propose three measures, i.e., graph entropy (GE), time efficacy entropy (TEE) and quality entropy (QE) to evaluate the performance of FAPMIS. When comparing the numerical results among the measures, we found that HVRMS got the minimum TEE and GE values, which indicates its inefficiency in combating the misappropriation of funds and over-staffing in TH management. Thus, HVRMS is not recommended for real-life applications in China. However, VMS attains a higher GE and TEE value than RMS, indicating that VMS will theoretically lead to relatively lower risk of misappropriation of funds and over-staffing.

Highlights ► We classified the different FAPMISs of trunk highway in mainland China. ► Classified FAPMISs are logically represented to graphic structures. ► Entropy-based method was presented for evaluating the performance of FAPMISs.