Evaluating the regional social sustainability contribution of public‐private partnerships in China: The development of an indicator system

Abstract

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been increasingly adopted in China. Sustainability of PPPs has become a priority for a sustainable development of PPPs. Most prior studies focus on sustainable implementation of PPP projects. Few research efforts have been done to examine the impacts of PPPs to sustainability from an external perspective and a more macro geographical scale. Meanwhile, the social aspect of the sustainability of PPPs has not been widely studied. Therefore, this study aims to propose a social sustainability contribution evaluation system (SSCES) for PPPs to evaluate PPPs' contribution to regional social sustainability at the institutional level. An indicator system of the SSCES for PPPs was developed, which included 8 requirements for socially sustainable development and 33 social sustainability indicators. The weights of indicators were determined by using the analytic hierarchy process method. The results indicate that, in the context of China, promoting peopleoriented urbanization in PPPs can help enhance regional social sustainability. This study provides a useful evaluation tool for various stakeholders to evaluate the sustainability of PPPs from an institutional level, especially for local governments to review current PPP polices and make improvements.

Public–private partnership as a tool for sustainable development – What literatures say?

“…Although certain attributes of PPP have been associated with sustainability, the perception of sustainable development has not received enough attention from PPP‐related researchers (Berrone et al, 2019; Hueskes, Verhoest, & Block, 2017). There has been evidence showing that, sustainability has not been at the core of most PPP studies; hence, an in‐depth investigation on literature is urgently required (Chen, Li, & Man, 2019; Yuan, Zhang, Tan, & Skibniewski, 2019). Furthermore, there is a lack of clear definition of sustainability‐oriented PPP.…”

Critical Factors to Achieve Sustainability of Public-Private Partnership Projects in the Water Sector: A Stakeholder-Oriented Network Perspective

“…e Challenge of Project Construction Quality. According to Yuan et al's framework of the sustainability of PPPs, project construction quality is the basic condition and prerequisite to achieve sustainability [90]. e construction quality of a water PPP project is related to the successful delivery of the project and the realization of value of money in the project lifecycle.…”

The Analytical Component of the Macro-Financial Indicators of Sustainable Development

“…На макрорівні слід приділяти увагу кількісним показникам навіть у якісних стратегіях сталого розвиткутаких положень дотримуються дослідники Р. Роттенбург, С. Меррі (R. Rottenburg, S. Merry) [3], за такими ж принципами побудовано звіт щодо індикаторів сталого розвитку Франції [2]. У Китайській Народній Республіці дослідники активно діляться досвідом державно-приватного партнерства, в основі аналітичної складової якого покладено моніторинг макрофінансових індикаторів сталого розвитку [4]. Зазначений досвід доводить, що сталий розвиток буде унікальним для кожної із економік і фінансових систем, але подібним у інструментарії його досягнення.…”