Perceived justice is crucial to achieving public–private partnership (PPP) projects’ goals, but little is known about the transmission mechanism of perceived justice that affects added value in PPP projects. Therefore, this research intends to investigate the link between perceived justice and PPP projects’ added value and their underlying mechanism by analysing the mediating role of cooperative behaviour.
Based on 246 valid survey data collected from the Chinese PPP professionals, structural equation modelling was adopted to analyse and test the proposed hypotheses.
The results show all three dimensions of perceived justice positively correlated with PPP projects’ added value. The influence effect from high to low was determined to be as follows: interactive, distributive and procedural justice. Moreover, both perfunctory and consummate performance were found to be positively correlated with and thus of great importance to PPP projects’ added value, but perfunctory performance was found to have a greater influence coefficient. The relationship between perceived justice and PPP projects’ added value is mediated by perfunctory and consummate performance. Therefore, the strategies of perceived justice in improving added value are verified in the context of Chinese PPP projects.
The findings of this study can help realise added value in three ways. Firstly, new perspectives for PPP project added value should be proposed by combining the improvement of project basic objectives and the realisation of the participants’ implicit demands. Secondly, the effects of different perceived justice on added value should be analysed instead of a single dimension of perceived justice. Thirdly, the mediating effects of different types of cooperative behaviour that may influence the relationship between perceived justice and added value should be evaluated.
This study contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between perceived justice and PPP projects’ added value and provides a reliable reference for project managers to achieve added value outcomes in PPP projects. In addition, this study reveals the impact of perceived justice on PPP projects’ added value and the path of perceived justice transformation. This provides a useful reference for project managers to take advantage of the positive effects of distributive, interactive and procedural justice to enhance inter-organizational cooperative behaviour. This study thus helps improve the practice and value of PPP projects by using the right strategy of perceived justice.
The research clarifies the impacts of multidimensional perceived justice for added value of PPP projects throughout the implementation process. It offers a new perspective on PPP projects’ added value by combining the improvement of the realisation of participants’ implicit claims.
