A study of public private partnership project success factors and risk management integration in mainland China

Abstract

To solve the conflict between limited fiscal funds and increasing demands to strengthen infrastructure construction, Public Private Partnership (PPP) was introduced by the Chinese government as an effective approach to make use of private investment to implement infrastructure projects. To provide services or facilities for public use, in PPP, participants pool their skills and resources while at the same time sharing the risks and rewards. The application of PPP could not only ease the government’s financial pressure, but also improve the efficiency of infrastructure construction and ensure the service quality of projects. Although PPP produces these benefits, the complexity and long-term features of PPP projects expose participants to more risks than in traditional projects. Therefore, risk management of participants is critical to the success of PPP projects. As an innovative procurement approach involves a variety of stakeholders over a long time span, it is necessary to investigate how to appraise and recognize PPP project success. In addition, although risk management has attracted much attention, few studies examine the detailed link between various dimensions of risk management and PPP project success. This research therefore intends to fill these two gaps. Compared with countries in the West, PPP was introduced into China relatively recently. A comparative study was employed in this research in order to understand the Chinese situation and to make use of the experience of other countries to critique PPP project performance in Mainland China. In this study, a two-pronged research program—comprising quantitative and qualitative approaches—was used to test and validate the tripartite theoretical model which was set up based on Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), Resource-based View (RBV) and Relational Exchange Theory (RET). In the quantitative study, questionnaire surveys were conducted concurrently in Mainland China and other places. Hierarchical Multiple Regression was used to explore the relationships posited in the research framework. To provide supportive and complementary evidence to the quantitative data, a case study of a PPP project in Mainland China was undertaken. Open-ended interviews and the thematic analysis technique were adopted in the case study. Taken together, the findings indicated that although the facets of risk management significantly affect project success, there are subtle different influences on different stakeholders’ benefits. For example, the uncertainty of social issues and economic issues will affect public partner’s benefits while the uncertainty of political & institutional issues, economic issues and project specific issues are directly influence private partner’s benefits. To maximize their own interests, different stakeholders should pay more attention to the influencing factors that are specifically associated with them. Meanwhile, it is demonstrated that individual efforts on risk management also contribute to the benefits of other stakeholders as well as to the whole industry development. In addition, the comparative study suggests that public partners of PPP projects in Mainland China could refer to the risk management experience of public partners from other countries to make an appropriate risk management commitment and better manage risks. On the other hand, private partners of PPP projects in Mainland China need to pay more attention to the macro-control of the government so as to protect their rights and interests.