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This study aims to examine the association between community engagement, community commitment and sustainability of public–private partnership (PPP) projects in Uganda.

This study adopted a cross-sectional and quantitative approach. Data were collected using a questionnaire from 42 PPP projects in Uganda.

The study found that community engagement and commitment are all positively and significantly associated with the sustainability of PPP projects in Uganda. Results also show that community commitment mediates community engagement and project sustainability.

The study results imply that for sustainability to be achieved, communities must be engaged in project activities such as planning, design and implementation to boost their commitment to project sustainability.

The sustainability of PPP projects is an emerging phenomenon. This paper contributes to scanty literature on ensuring the sustainability of PPP projects from a developing country’s perspective.

Global crises have become increasingly recurrent events that jeopardize public-private partnerships (PPPs). In this context, the purpose of this paper is to expose the PPP-crisis research agenda by combining bibliometric and network analyses.

The PPP literature associated with global crises between the 2008 global financial crisis and 2022 was analyzed in three stages: (1) paper selection and screening for the inclusion/exclusion of articles relevant to this research, (2) semantic network development for examining thematic relationships among selected papers by considering the co-occurrence of keywords within the chosen studies and (3) calculation of network metrics for analysis.

The paper identified six research avenues for the PPP-crisis agenda: public interest, relational governance, risk management, user-pay PPPs, crisis management and financial performance. The PPP-crisis literature has spread significantly in the last five years driven by the case study approaches on a national or regional basis. Conversely, non-crisis periods generate room to strengthen user-pay PPPs and relational governance. The pandemic and post-pandemic times shared the priorities of the 2008 financial crisis but also strengthened the management of the risks and the structural drivers of the global crisis.

This study demonstrates that during global crisis periods, the public interest and financial performance gain relevance in a detriment of structural solutions to social legitimacy erosion of PPPs because of the urgency of giving tools to the public and private sectors to tackle the financial issues, which steer future issues for PPPs.

With the increasing complexity of public–private partnership (PPP) projects, the amount of data generated during the construction process is massive. This paper aims to develop a new information management method to cope with the risk problems involved in dealing with such data, based on domain ontologies of the construction industry, to help manage PPP risks, share and reuse risk knowledge.

Risk knowledge concepts are acquired and summarized through PPP failure cases and an extensive literature review to establish a domain framework for risk knowledge using ontology technology to help manage PPP risks.

The results indicate that the risk ontology is capable of capturing key concepts and relationships involved in managing PPP risks and can be used to facilitate knowledge reuse and storage beneficial to risk management.

The classes in the risk knowledge ontology model constructed in this research do not yet cover all the information in PPP project risks and need to be further extended. Moreover, only the framework and basic methods needed are developed, while the construction of a working ontology model and the relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge is a complicated process that requires repeated modifications and evaluations before it can be implemented.

The ontology provides a basis for turning PPP risk information into risk knowledge to allow the effective sharing and communication of project risks between different project stakeholders. It can also have the potential to help reduce the dependence on subjectivity by mining, using and storing tacit knowledge in the risk management process.

The apparent suitability of the nine classes of PPP risk knowledge (project model, risk type, risk occurrence stage, risk source, risk consequence, risk likelihood, risk carrier, risk management measures and risk case) is identified, and the proposed construction method and steps for a complete domain ontology for PPP risk management are unique. A combination of criteria- and task-based evaluations is also developed for assessing the PPP risk ontology for the first time.

The demand for retirement villages globally has been increasing due to the rapid growth in the ageing population in recent years. To address the rising challenges in the retirement market, the public–private partnership (PPP) has become a feasible method to develop retirement villages. This paper aims to survey and examine the key success criteria (SC) for using the PPP approach in the retirement village sector.

An empirical questionnaire survey was conducted with experts experienced in international PPP and retirement village. The analysis was conducted using one-way analysis of variance, mean score analysis, Kendall’s coefficient of concordance and factor analysis.

Results indicate that out of the 16 recognized SC, the most significant ones are SC1: “Affordability”, SC11: “Reduced social isolation of residents” and SC14: “Improvement of emotional wellbeing of residents”. Furthermore, results from the factor analysis technique indicate that the 16 SC can be classified into five major factor groupings, and these include SCG1 – “Financial performance of project”; SCG2 – “Adherence to design and technical specifications”; SCG3 – “Adherence to local council/authority’s environmental health and socio-economic requirements”; SCG4 – “Social inclusion and risk management”; and SCG5 – “Advancement in emotional wellbeing and physical health of residents”.

The study will sufficiently assist retirement village stakeholders, retirement village project participants and related government authorities of the best measures to put in place to maintain the sustainable development of the global retirement village market.

Despite the widespread study and application of public-private partnerships (PPPs) since the 1980s, the field lacks a universally accepted definition that captures the concept's complexity. This study aims to offer a definition and foster a more substantive and comprehensive discourse on PPPs to improve communication and understanding between academics and practitioners from diverse disciplines and legislative backgrounds.

Grounded in the family-resemblance concept proposed by German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, this study conducts a comprehensive literature review to identify core and non-core elements frequently cited in PPP descriptions. The authors used these findings to develop the PPP sunflower model as a structured framework for defining PPPs.

The analysis elucidates six core elements consistently present in PPP descriptions: clarity of roles and responsibilities, appropriate risk allocation and sharing, injection of expertise and resources, cooperation and teamwork, a bundle of services, and long-term contracts. Coupled with identified non-core elements, these core components comprise the PPP sunflower model, a structured framework for defining PPPs that accommodates their multi-faceted nature.

The PPP sunflower model distinguishes itself as a unique contribution to the PPP literature. It offers a rigorous theoretical framework that can elucidate the complexity of PPPs for various stakeholders. The model serves as a practical tool for evaluating the authenticity and viability of PPP projects. The study's novelty lies in its adoption of the family-resemblance concept, thereby providing a comprehensive, multi-dimensional framework that enhances the understanding of PPPs across different disciplines and legislative contexts.

Public–private partnership (PPP), a project financing arrangement between private investors and the public sector, has revolutionized the approach to the funding and development of public infrastructure worldwide. However, the increasing cases of financial risks and poor financial risk management related to the model threaten the sustainability and financial success of PPP projects leading to huge financial investment losses. This study aims to review existing literature to establish the key measures to control the financial risks of sustainable PPP projects.

A PRISMA-compliant systematic literature review method was used in this study. Data were sourced from academic databases consisting of 56 impactful peer-reviewed journal articles.

The review outcomes demonstrate 41 critical factors (measures) in mitigating the financial risks of sustainable PPP projects. They include minimum revenue guarantee, strategic alliance with private investors, financial transparency and accountability and sound macroeconomic policies. The principal results of the study were categorized and conceptualized into a financial risk management maturity model for sustainable PPP projects. Lastly, the study reveals that further studies and project policies must focus more on addressing financial challenges relating to climate risks, and health and safety concerns such as COVID-19 outbreak that have negative impacts on PPP projects.

The results provide essential research gaps and directions for future studies on measures to mitigate the financial risks of sustainable PPP projects. However, this study used small but significant existing publications.

A checklist and a conceptual maturity model are provided in this study to help practitioners to learn and improve upon their practices to mitigate the financial risks of sustainable PPP projects.

This study contributes to managerial measures to reduce huge losses in financial investments of PPP projects and the attainment of sustainability in public infrastructure projects with a financial risk maturity model.

Various approaches have emerged to assist practitioners in making more informed decisions in highway construction projects. However, industry practitioners are still using subjective ways to make decisions. Also, researchers have developed tools and techniques with similar objectives. Lack of information on what has been developed might lead to those issues. Therefore, this paper aims to review trends of evolution, pinpoint strengths and gaps in the literature and identifies potential future directions for decision-making research in highway construction projects.

A systematic review was conducted on published articles on decision-making in highway construction projects using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) technique.

The analysis of 101 articles revealed that existing decision-making research in highway construction projects targets improvements in four areas: feasibility, conceptual, detailed scope and detailed design. The four areas consist of sixteen subthemes that are detailed in this study. In addition, most research involved developing decision support tools and systems as well as decision-making models, techniques and frameworks. Lastly, several research areas have emerged, such as adding more decision criteria including those with uncertainties, expanding existing decision-making models into decision support systems, benchmarking decision criteria between different sample populations and exploring inter-and intra-relationships between decision criteria.

This paper provides an overview of existing research on decision-making in highway construction projects. Also, it reveals research gaps in the body of knowledge to point out directions for future research. Finally, industry practitioners can use the findings to develop strategies for effective decision-making processes.

The unprecedented SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has further constrained the budgets of governments worldwide for delivering their much-needed infrastructure. Consequently, public-private partnerships (PPPs), with the private sector's investment and ingenuity, would appear to be an increasingly popular alternative. Value for money (VfM) has become the major criterion for evaluating PPPs against the traditional public sector procurement and, however, is plagued with controversy. Hence, it is important that governments compare and contrast their practice with similar and disparate bodies to engender best practice. This paper, therefore, aims to understand governments' assessment context and provide a cross-continental comparison of their VfM assessment.

Faced with different domestic contexts (e.g. aging infrastructure, population growth, and competing demands on finance), governments tend to place different emphases when undertaking the VfM assessment. In line with the theory of boundary spanning, a cross-continental comparison is conducted between three of the most noticeable PPP markets (i.e. the United Kingdom, Australia and China) about their VfM assessment. The institutional level is interpreted by a social, economic and political framework, and the methodological level is elucidated through a qualitative and quantitative VfM assessment.

There are individual institutional characteristics that have shaped the way each country assesses VfM. For the methodological level, we identify that: (1) these global markets use a public sector comparator as the benchmark in VfM assessment; (2) ambiguous qualitative assessment is conducted only against PPPs to strengthen their policy development; (3) Australia's priority is in service provision whereas that of the UK and China is project finance and production; and (4) all markets are seeking an amelioration of existing controversial VfM assessments so that purported VfM relates to project lifecycles. As such, an option framework is proposed to make headway towards a sensible selection of infrastructure procurement approaches in the post COVID-19 era.

This study addresses a current void of enhancing the decision-making process for using PPPs within today's changing environment and then opens up an avenue for future empirical research to examine the option framework and ensuing VfM decisions. Practically, it presents a holistic VfM landscape for public sector procurers that aim to engage with PPPs for their infrastructure interventions.

Infrastructure financialization plays a critical role in infrastructure development and urban growth around the world. However, on the one hand, the existing research on the infrastructure financialization focuses on qualitative and lacks quantitative country-specific studies. On the other hand, the spatial heterogeneity and influencing factors of infrastructure financialization are ignored. This study takes China as a typical case to identify and analyze the spatial characteristics, development process and impact factors of infrastructure financialization.

To assess the development and characteristics of infrastructure financialization in China, this study constructs an evaluation index of infrastructure financialization based on the infrastructure financialization ratio (IFR). This study then analyzes the evolution process and spatial pattern of China's infrastructure financialization through the spatial analysis method. Furthermore, this study identifies and quantitatively analyzes the influencing factors of infrastructure financialization based on the spatial Dubin model. Finally, this study offers a policy suggestion as a governance response.

The results demonstrate that infrastructure financialization effectively promotes the development of infrastructure in China. Second, there are significant spatial differences in China’s infrastructure financialization. Third, many factors affect infrastructure financialization, with government participation having the greatest impact. In addition, over-financialization of infrastructure has the potential to lead to government debt risks, which is a critical challenge the Chinese Government must address. Finally, this study suggests that infrastructure financialization requires more detailed, tailored,and place-specific policy interventions by the government.

This study not only contributes to enriching the knowledge body of global financialization theory but also helps optimize infrastructure investment and financing policies in China and provides peer reference for other developing countries.

This paper delves into the ex ante rates of return demanded by the private sector in Indonesian public–private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects and the manifold factors emanating from project attributes that can influence these rates.

This paper analyzes feasibility studies of 37 PPP projects across different sectors. The studies were carefully selected based on relevance, completeness and validity of data. The analysis uses statistical techniques, including Levene’s tests, t-tests, ANOVA tests, Cohen’s effect size and Pearson correlations, to explore differences in cost of capital and excess returns across various attributes.

Based on the statistical analysis, no significant difference exists between the excess return of 200 basis points (bps) and the equity excess return of 0 bps. This suggests that the eligibility criteria for PPP projects require an internal rate of return (IRR) equal to the weighted average cost of capital plus 200 bps or an equity IRR equal to the cost of equity. The variations in the tested variables among diverse project attributes do not exhibit statistically significant disparities, even though specific attributes display moderate to high effect sizes.

This paper represents one of the first attempts to examine the rates of return demanded by the private sector in the context of Indonesian PPP projects. It comprehensively explores the factors that influence these rates, drawing on insights derived from feasibility studies.