What are the influencing factors of government’s trust decision-making on private sector in PPP projects: evidence from China?
Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology
ISSN: 1726-0531
Article publication date: 10 March 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it explores the influencing factors of the government’s trust decision-making in the private sector; second, it explores how these influencing factors affect the government’s trust decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
A theoretical model was established, and a questionnaire survey was conducted among 152 professionals. The collected datas were analyzed by the structural equation modeling (SEM) method.
Findings
The study identified four critical factors that influence the government’s decision to trust the private sector in public-private-partnership (PPP) projects. All the four factors have a positively correlated impact on the government’s trust decision-making. The structural equation path analysis shows that the most important factor affecting the government’s trust decision-making is the trustee’s (private sector) trustworthy characteristics, and the path coefficient is 0.92. The path coefficients of risk perception and the trustor’s trust tendency are 0.83 and 0.74, respectively. The influence of the legal system environment on government trust decision-making is moderate, with a path coefficient of 0.68.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature in two aspects. First, the factors influencing decision-making to government trust in the private sector in PPP projects have been identified. Second, a comprehensive view of the mechanism of government trust in the private sector in PPP projects has been theorized by the SEM method.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge with gratitude the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (No. 19YJC630078), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71974056 and No. 71302191), National Key R & D Program of China (No. 2018YFC0406905),Youth Talents Teachers Scheme of Henan Province Universities (No. 2018GGJS080), the Foundation for Distinguished Young Talents in Higher Education of Henan (Humanities and Social Sciences), China (No. 2017-cxrc-023), China Scholarship Council (No. 201908410388), 2018 Henan Province Water Conservancy Science and Technology Project (GG201828). This study would not have been possible without their financial support.
Data availability statement: The data used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Disclaimers: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
Citation
Li, H., Xu, C., Cao, Y. and Zhang, C. (2022), "What are the influencing factors of government’s trust decision-making on private sector in PPP projects: evidence from China?", Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEDT-12-2021-0715
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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