The Evolutionary Game of Trust in Public-Private Partnership Project Networks

Xiangtian Nie,Tianyu Fan,Kai Feng,Shengnan Wang,Guoxiang Zhao,Georgios Dounias

doi:10.1155/2021/5514708

Abstract

In public-private partnership (PPP) projects, the government plays a role as both regulator and participant. Trust between the government and the private sector is important as it may affect project performance and even cause the problem of a breach of contract, which may lead to project failure. Little is known, however, about the formation and evolution mechanisms of trust in this context. This study analyses the complex evolution of trust in PPP project networks. An evolutionary game of trust model between government and the private sector is established and analysed, the strategic equilibrium points are obtained by solving the replication dynamic equation, and the Jacobian matrix and differential equation stability theory are introduced to analyse the stability of the equilibrium points. The results reveal the relationships among the stable state of trust, the initial state of trust, and the payment matrix, indicating that the payment matrix can effectively shape the evolution process and stable state of trust to influence performance. This study provides a novel contribution in solving the complex trust problem in PPP project networks and it provides a new analytical tool for PPP project management practice.

Highlights

In recent years, project networks have attracted the attention of many researchers in the field of project management
Evolutionary game theory provides an analysis framework which is closer to project practice, it assumes that the players are bounded rational, and the players constantly adjust their strategies through learning in the game process until the whole system reaches a stable state. erefore, this paper introduces an evolutionary game to analyse the trust evolution between government and private sector in private partnership (PPP) projects
To reveal the processes of evolution and mechanisms of trust between the government and private sector in PPP project networks, this study constructs an evolutionary game model to analyse this problem while using the Jacobian matrix and the differential equation stability theory to explore the stable state. e results show that the four stable strategy profiles— {trust, distrust}, {distrust, trust}, {trust, trust}, and {distrust, distrust}—and the initial payoff matrix of the game have a predictive effect on the evolution process and stable strategy

Summary

Introduction

Project networks have attracted the attention of many researchers in the field of project management. Scholars have explored the relationship between stakeholders of projects and their influencing factors and the evolutionary mechanism by using theories and methods, such as game theory, social network analysis, and empirical research, and achieved rich results [1,2,3,4]. With the global popularity of the public-private partnership (PPP) mode, it is of great significance to study project networks in the context of PPP models. E purpose of PPP projects is to achieve a win-win situation between the government and private sector; scholars put forward different guarantee mechanisms to ensure the benefits of the two participants. Carbonara and Pellegrino developed a methodology to calculate the optimal maximum and minimum values of the revenue for achieving fairly risk-sharing and win-win condition between the government and private sector [7].

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion