Collaborative Evolutionary Model of the Hybrid Governance System of Public–Private Partnership Infrastructure Projects

Abstract

Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) are widely used in infrastructure construction due to their great advantages in the supply of public services. The evolutionary process linking hybrid governance and PPP project performance, as managed by multiple subjects, remains to be explored. This paper describes the hybrid governance system of PPP projects from the perspective of self-organization theory and proposes a system logic evolution model to illustrate its coevolution process with performance—namely, corporate governance level, public governance level, and PPP project performance level—are metaphorically represented as the three reactants in the Belousov–Zhabotinskii (B–Z) reaction. The results show that the synergy between the level of corporate governance and the level of public governance is key to improving the performance of PPP projects. The synergy is a complex nonlinear interaction affected by dynamic changes in the business environment during the evolution of the system. In a more developed business environment, the level of corporate governance will be in the highest state of evolution; the synergy effect will be more significant; the evolution of the system will be accelerated; and the performance of PPP projects will be significantly improved. The results of this study expand the mechanism of the influence of hybrid governance on PPP project performance, which provides a theoretical basis and practical guidance for promoting the healthy and sustainable development of PPP projects. Infrastructure PPP projects have the dual attributes of public welfare and commercial character; hence, they require the joint participation of public and private capital in governance, which presents a hybrid public–private governance structure. The Public–Private Partnership (PPP) model refers to the government’s introduction of social capital to participate in the investment and operation of urban infrastructure and other public welfare undertakings through concessions, reasonable pricing, financial subsidies, and other prior and publicized rules of engagement on revenues. Based on the hybrid governance structure of PPP projects, this paper combines self-organization theory to explore the law of synergistic promotion of PPP project performance between the public governance level of the government and the corporate governance level of the enterprise. The business environment plays a key role in promoting the synergistic evolution. The public needs to actively improve the regional business environment, construct an efficient and sustainable cooperation mechanism, categorize public goods and services in detail according to the differences in the regional business environment and other external environments, analyze the weights of public welfare and commercial character, then flexibly adjust the governance structure.