Contextual recipes for adopting private control and trust in public-private partnership governance

In governing public-private partnerships (PPPs), transferring control rights to the private sectors and building trust among partners are recognized as solutions to improve efficiency and adaptability. However, what contexts would fit into the adoption of these solutions remains unclear. Building on the relevant literature on project attributes and project environments, this article divides the context into several crucial factors: asset specificity, project publicness, institutional completeness, market maturity, and regulatory quality. A fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was conducted on 1378 PPP projects in developing countries to examine the contexts that support the outcomes of private control and trust. Six causal paths created by a mix of contextual conditions are found to be sufficient for the outcomes, to which certain factors make unique contributions. Knowledge of these paths and context configurations can help to match the context to the considered governance solutions, thereby contributing to successful PPP governance.