Research Trend of Public-Private Partnership in Construction Journals

An impressive series of content analyses of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) publications between 1998 and 2003 from four internationally renowned construction journals (including the International Journal of Project Management, the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, the Construction Management and Economics, and the Engineering Construction and Architectural Management) was reported. Their work inspired the writers of this paper to continue from where they left it. Based on a two-stage literature review, PPP articles from 1998 to 2008 were analyzed in terms of the annual number of PPP articles published, the writers’ contribution, and the research focus in their studies. From the analysis it was found that the number of PPP publications in these journals has been increasing. This finding might imply that PPPs are becoming more important to the construction industry at large. In addition, this study also found that the U.K. researchers have published the largest number of PPP articles, followed by those from the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, China, and Germany. Although the build-operate-transfer scheme was the most frequently investigated form of PPP in earlier research, the diverse concept of PPP has attracted a lot of research interest and has become the focus of most recent PPP publications. Research topics published in these journals on investment environment, governance issues, and other supported areas tend to receive more attention from researchers. Moreover, complicated and vigorous analysis techniques such as game theory and fuzzy set theory have also been applied in this field of study.