Investigating the Driving Factors of Public Participation in Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Projects—A Case Study of China

Public participation is an important procedure of the environmental impact assessment. Effective public participation is essential to the Public–Private Partnership (PPP) projects as such projects usually exert tremendous impacts on the environment and society. However, in literature, there are few studies investigating the driving factors of public participation in PPP projects, especially in the context of China. To bridge this research gap, this study proposed a theoretical model, which incorporates contextual factors (i.e., perceived benefit and perceived risk) into the classical Theory of Planned Behavior model, to explore the determinants. The initial proposed model was tested using structural equation modeling. Analysis results indicated that attitude towards behavior, subjective norm, perceived risk and perceived behavioral control were the four significant driving factors of public participation in PPP projects, whereas perceived benefit had limited impact. Furthermore, this study evaluated eight public participation approaches in PPP projects. Results revealed that the public were more willing to participate in public decisions through the internet platform, followed by the information disclosure or consultation provided by the government. The research findings derived in this study can provide valuable reference for the government to promulgate proper policies to attract more public participation in PPP projects. Moreover, the research idea and methods used in this study can be popularized in other countries to enhance the public participation in PPP projects.