Research On The Relationship Between Social Capital,Financing Ability And Investment Behavior Of Private Sector In PPP Project

With the rapid development of the economy,the public demand for public goods and services is rising,and the quality requirements are gradually increasing.At the same time,the growth rate of local government revenues is slowing down,and financing channels are subject to many restrictions.The PPP can alleviate the financial burden of local governments,resolve debt risks,and introduce private sector management experience into infrastructure construction to improve the quality of public goods and services.As of January 31,2019,there were a total of 8713 PPP projects in the country,but the landing rate was only 54.2%.The low participation rate of private sector has become an urgent problem for the government.At present,most of the domestic research on the PPP project landing rate problem is from a formal institutional perspective,ignoring the role of the informal system.However,the legal system related to PPP is missing.So far,China has not enacted a specific PPP law.Since the PPP has been vigorously promoted nationwide since 2014,problems such as imperfect system and lack of private sector withdrawal mechanism will take some time to resolve.Institutional theory holds that when the formal system is weak,the informal system will play an important role in economic exchange.Therefore,this paper aims to study the impact of the informal system——social capital on the private sector’s investment behavior in PPP projects from the perspective of informal institutions,further to reveal the factors that will affect the private sector’s investment in the existing institutional environment.This study analyzes the impact mechanism of social capital on the private sector’s investment behavior in PPP projects,and divides corporate social capital into two dimensions:vertical linkage and horizontal linkage.The analysis suggest that social capital will reduce information asymmetry between private sector and government,increase the trust between the two parties,reduce the opportunistic behavior of the government,and increase the opportunity for private sector to invest in PPP projects,thereby increasing the tendency of private sector to invest in PPP projects,and further analyzes the mediating effect of financing capacity between social capital and investment behavior.The paper uses PSM method to seclect samples.Firstly,all listed companies participating in the PPP project in 2014-2018 are used as experimental group samples,and PSM is used to match the control group in the initial sample of all listed companies in the industry in which the PPP project is located.Finally,the overall sample consisting of the experimental group and the control group is used as the research object.This study mainly uses binary logistic regression and multiple linear regression to test the proposed hypothesis,The test results show that the higher the social capital level of the private sector,the more inclined to invest in PPP projects;the more links between private sector and local governments,the stronger the financing ability;the financing ability on the private sector promotes them to invest PPP projects.The relationship between private sector and the government affects its investment behavior in PPP projects by affecting its financing capabilities.The positive impact of horizontal linkages on financing capabilities is not significant,and this paper explains it from scope of research and the availability of data.The significance of this research is to introduce the perspective of informal institutional research into the research of PPP landing rate,enrich the research on the PPP project landing rate,and provide a reference for the government to solve the problem of low participation rate of social capital in PPP projects.