Abstract
How to enhance social investor’s partnership with government departments and improve its economic and social performance in PPP(Public-Private Partnership) projects has been the focus of research. Based on the equity theory and risk perception theory, this study attempts to find the path to improve social investor’s economic and social performance from the perspective of government unfair behaviors in PPP projects. Firstly, this paper forms a conceptual model according to social investor’s logic of "Unfair Behavior-Perceived risk- Performance (Moderator: Transaction Specific Assets)" in PPP projects. Then, based on the relevant literature, the measurement scale of each variable is designed and the questionnaire survey is formed. Finally, the questionnaire survey is sent out via “wenjuanxing”(a crowdsourcing platform) and 306 valid data is collected, and the structural model and multiple linear regression are used to verify related hypotheses by using SPSS25 & AMOS26 software. The empirical results indicate that：
First, the three unfair behaviors (procedural unfairness, distributive unfairness, interactive unfairness) of government departments in PPP projects have different influence on social investor’s performance, and social investor usually places more emphasis on social performance rather than economic performance. However, although the influence of unfair behaviors on performance in PPP projects is significant, the correlation coefficient is low, especially the influence of distributive unfairness on social performance is the lowest. According to the distribution status of unfair behaviors, the score of distributive unfairness is relatively the highest, while the score of procedural unfairness is relatively the lowest. Government departments are in a relatively strong position in the actual development of Chinese PPP projects, and their attitudes, communication forms and trust relationships with social investors will have substantial influences on the progress of the PPP project, which will directly affect social investor’s performance of construction and operation stage.
Second, all the three unfair behaviors of government departments have significant influence on the perceived risk of social investors. First of all, the partnership between government in PPP projects and social investors should be based on the premise of equality and mutual benefit, but this does not deny that the government exercises its public administration power in the emergency and special circumstances (such as natural disasters, serious damage to public interests, etc.) in order to ensure the stable and safe supply of public services, while the utilization scope of this power will be more extensive in Chinese government departments. Moreover, the partnership between government and social investors not only means mutual benefit but also means risk sharing, In PPP projects that comply with the rules of market economy, benefits and risks are matched, so risk sharing is another basis of partnership besides benefit sharing.
Third, there are two types of perceived risks (relationship perceived risk, performance perceived risk) that have significant effects on the performance of social investor in PPP projects. Perceived risk plays a mediating role in the influence of the government’s unfair behaviors on different types of social investor’s performance, but the mediating effect of two different perceived risks is also different to some extent. In fact, neither government nor social investor obtain high economic returns in PPP projects. They pay more attention to the long-term social influence and public satisfaction brought by PPP projects. Therefore, both relationship perceived risk and performance perceived risk have a more significant influence on social performance. In the process of equal cooperation of PPP projects, social investors through perceived risks to judge the possibility of various risks and harmful consequences, from the perspective of risk prevention to adjust cooperation attitude and working mode in order to reach a consensus with the government and continue to promote cooperation, of course, may also terminate the cooperation due to serious differences between the two sides.
Fourth, transaction specific assets play a moderating role between perceived risk and performance. This moderating effect is particularly evident in the relationship between the two perceived risks with social performance. In PPP projects, the amount of financing is closely related to the income of the project itself and the policy support. It is related to whether the project company can smoothly promote the project implementation in the future, and affects the stability of cash flow and the excess of asset value of the project company. However, the responsibility and risk of project financing is usually borne by the social investors. In a PPP project, if the financing volume is not high but the social investor has invested too much transaction specific assets in the early stage, the social investor’s risk protection consciousness for the invested transaction specific assets will play a significant moderating role in the negative influence of perceived risk on project performance.