Mapping the Barriers of Utilizing Public Private Partnership into Brownfield Remediation Projects in the Public Land Ownership

The financing issue is increasingly becoming a key problem for brownfield remediation in public land ownership, and Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode is considered a potentially effective solution. However, some barriers impede the utilization of the PPP mode into brownfield remediation projects in the situation of public land ownership. By taking China as an example, the study investigates the barriers when the PPP mode is used in brownfield remediation projects to deal with financing dilemmas. Specifically, 39 original barriers are first obtained from existing related literature. Based on these original barriers, a semi-structured questionnaire is designed and used in a Delphi process to achieve 14 final barriers, which can reflect the particular situation in China. To identify the interrelationship among these barriers, Interpretative Structural Modeling (ISM) is used to map the hierarchical structure of the final barriers, and the Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) analysis is applied to show the relationship strengths of barriers. According to the results of the ISM and MICMAC analyses, three key barriers are determined, and several corresponding recommendations are provided from the perspective of the public administration.