National Culture Shapes Private Investment in Transportation Infrastructure Projects around the Globe
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 144, Issue 2
Abstract
Recent decades have seen extensive use of public-private partnerships (PPP) in international infrastructure development from governments, private construction firms, and humanitarian organizations. Given the high social importance of civil infrastructure, considerable research attention has sought factors that lead to successful PPP. In a contribution to this body of work, and to the theory of the social sustainability of infrastructure, this paper presents statistical evidence showing that the choice of how to engage private investment in infrastructure is not culturally neutral. This analysis is built on a World Bank database of 1,792 railroad, seaport, airport, and toll road projects with private investment from 27 low- and middle-income nations and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Multinomial logistic regression shows that there are statistically significant relationships between Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the various methods used to enable private investment in infrastructure projects. For all transport project types aggregated together, high power distance index scores predict the use of private funds in projects involving the construction of new infrastructure, while high individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance scores predict the use of private funds in brownfield projects. Toll roads, which change a cultural norm regarding how most roads are accessed and paid for, emerged as a divergent technology type. Railroads are the technology type most strongly influenced by cultural dimensions. Engineers and policymakers may use these results to understand what forms of private investment in transportation infrastructure are more likely to be culturally acceptable in a wide variety of local contexts.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Data Availability Statement
Data analyzed during the study were provided by a third party. Requests for data should be directed to the provider indicated in the Acknowledgments. Information about the journal’s data-sharing policy can be found here: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%29CO.1943-7862.0001263.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks are due to the World Bank and all those involved in populating the Private Participation in Infrastructure database. Similarly, this analysis would not have been possible without Geert Hofstede’s work in cross-cultural differences. The author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments, which greatly improved this work and its presentation.
References
Ashuri, B., Kashani, H., Molenaar, K. R., Lee, S., and Lu, J. (2012). “Risk-neutral pricing approach for evaluating BOT highway projects with government minimum revenue guarantee options.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 545–557.
Comu, S., Unsal, H., and Taylor, J. E. (2011). “Dual impact of cultural and linguistic diversity on project network performance.” J. Manage. Eng., 179–187.
Deephouse, D. L., and Suchman, M. C. (2008). “Legitimacy in organizational institutionalism.” The SAGE handbook of organizational institutionalism, R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, K. Sahlin-Andersson, and R. Suddaby, eds., SAGE, Thousand Oaks, CA.
De Mooij, M. (1998). “Masculinity/femininity and consumer behavior.” Masculinity and femininity: The taboo dimension of national cultures, SAGE, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Franz, B. W., and Leicht, R. M. (2016). “An alternative classification of project delivery methods used in the United States building construction industry.” Constr. Manage. Econ., 34(3), 160–173.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Hofstede, G. (2015). “Dimension data matrix.” ⟨http://www.geerthofstede.com/dimension-data-matrix⟩ (Sep. 8, 2016).
Huang, Y.-L., and Pi, C.-C. (2014). “Real-option valuation of build-operate-transfer infrastructure projects under performance bonding.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 04013068.
Kaminsky, J. (2015). “Cultured construction: Global evidence of the impact of national values on sanitation infrastructure choice.” Environ. Sci. Technol., 49(12), 7134–7141.
Kaminsky, J. (2016a). “Cultured construction: Global evidence of the impact of national values on renewable electricity infrastructure choice.” Environ. Sci. Technol., 50(4), 2108–2116.
Kaminsky, J. (2016b). “Cultured construction: Global evidence of the impact of national values on water infrastructure choice.” Environ. Sci. Technol., 50(14), 7723–7731.
Kirkman, B. L., Lowe, K. B., and Gibson, C. B. (2006). “A quarter century of culture’s consequences: A review of empirical research incorporating Hofstede’s cultural values framework.” J. Int. Bus. Stud., 37(3), 285–320.
Kivrak, S., Arslan, G., Tuncan, M., and Birgonul, M. T. (2014). “Impact of national culture on knowledge sharing in international construction projects.” Can. J. Civil Eng., 41(7), 642–649.
Schimmack, U., Oishi, S., and Diener, E. (2005). “Individualism: A valid and important dimension of cultural differences between nations.” Personality Social Psychol. Rev., 9(1), 17–31.
Sivakumar, K., and Nakata, C. (2001). “The stampede toward Hofstede’s framework: Avoiding the sample design pit in cross-cultural research.” J. Int. Bus. Stud., 32(3), 555–574.
Starkey, P., and Hine, J. (2014). Poverty and sustainable transport: How transport affects poor people with policy implications for poverty reduction, UN-Habitat, Nairobi, Kenya.
Stata version 14.2 [Computer software]. StataCorp LLC, College Station, TX.
Sui Pheng, L., and Yuquan, S. (2002). “An exploratory study of Hofstede’s cross-cultural dimensions in construction projects.” Manage. Decis., 40(1), 7–16.
Taras, V., Kirkman, B. L., and Steel, P. (2010). “Examining the impact of Culture’s consequences: A three-decade, multilevel, meta-analytic review of Hofstede’s cultural value dimensions.” J. Appl. Psychol., 95(3), 405–439.
UN-Habitat. (2016). Mobilizing sustainable transport for development: Sustainable development knowledge platform, High-Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Transport, Nairobi, Kenya.
Vives, A., Benavides, J., and Paris, A. M. (2010). “Selecting infrastructure delivery modalities: No time for ideology or semantics.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 412–418.
Washington, M., and Zajac, E. J. (2005). “Status evolution and competition: Theory and evidence.” Acad. Manage. J., 48(2), 282–296.
World Bank. (2015). “Main changes to PPI DB methodology.” ⟨http://ppi.worldbank.org/∼/media/GIAWB/PPI/Documents/Misc/PPI-methodology-Updates2015.pdf⟩ (Nov. 1, 2016).
World Bank. (2016a). “Private participation in infrastructure database— Glossary.” ⟨http://ppi.worldbank.org/methodology/glossary⟩ (Oct. 10, 2016).
World Bank. (2016b). “Private participation in infrastructure project database.” ⟨http://ppi.worldbank.org/⟩ (Oct. 7, 2016).
Xiong, W., Zhang, X., and Chen, H. (2016). “Early-termination compensation in public-private partnership projects.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 04015098.
Xu, J.-W., Jiang, L., and Moon, S. (2017). “Determination of the optimal concession period for BOT contract projects based on a discrete stochastic process model.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 143(4), 04016119.
Zanona, M. (2017). “Ryan offers picture of public-private spending in Trump’s infrastructure plan.” The Hill, Washington, DC.
Zhang, X. (2005). “Critical success factors for public-private partnerships in infrastructure development.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 3–14.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 144 • Issue 2 • February 2018
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 27, 2017
Accepted: Jul 7, 2017
Published online: Nov 17, 2017
Published in print: Feb 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Apr 17, 2018
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.