A review of emerging trends in global PPP research: analysis and visualization

The last decade has witnessed rapid development in the literature on public-private partnerships (PPPs); however, there have been few attempts to map the global research in this domain. To identify the state of the field and trends in PPP research, the CiteSpace software package was used in this study to conduct a series of content analyses and examine global patterns among publications, including the distribution of core authors and institutions; high-frequency categories and keywords; journal and author contributions; highly cited papers and hot topics of research; and trends with regard to co-author analysis, co-word analysis, co-citation analysis, and particularly cluster analysis. We present all research focuses in a scientometric way and arrive at the following findings. First, the most significant developments and progress in PPP research have occurred primarily in China, the US, the UK and Australia. Second, the existing studies in the field of PPP research focus primarily on Engineering, Business and Economics, and Public Administration. Third, the emerging trends in PPP research have shifted away from concession pricing and concession periods, PPP legislation, procurement management, critical success factors, value for money and PPP project governance toward risk allocation, performance evaluation, renegotiation of concession contracts, real option evaluation and contract management, which are likely to define the new research frontier in the field of PPP research.