Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects in Sustainable Infrastructure development are characterized by multifaceted uncertainties across their lifecycle phases. This study identifies, classifies, and prioritizes critical uncertainties affecting PPP Sustainable Infrastructure projects through multi-stakeholder analysis, employing advanced statistical techniques to establish relationships between uncertainty dimensions and project phases. A sequential mixed-methods research design combined systematic literature review, expert interviews with 25 practitioners selected on the basis of a minimum ten years of PPP experience, and a large-scale structured questionnaire survey of 312 key stakeholders including government agencies, private developers, financial institutions, and consultants involved in PPP Sustainable Infrastructure projects in Kerala, India. Exploratory Factor Analysis with Varimax rotation identified seven underlying uncertainty dimensions. Construct validity was assessed through Average Variance Extracted (AVE), composite reliability (CR), and HTMT ratios, supplementing reliability evidence from Cronbach’s alpha. The study identified 44 critical uncertainty factors categorized into seven dimensions: Political-Regulatory, Financial-Economic, Technical-Design, Environmental-Social, Legal-Contractual, Operational-Maintenance, and Market-Demand. Statistical analyses including Relative Importance Index, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple regression modeling revealed that Financial-Economic and Political-Regulatory uncertainties exhibited the highest criticality and the strongest unique effects on project success. Phase-wise analysis using repeated measures ANOVA with Greenhouse-Geisser sphericity correction indicated heightened uncertainty impact during the development and construction phases, with statistically significant uncertainty transmission effects across project lifecycle stages. The potential endogeneity arising from common-source data is acknowledged and addressed through methodological safeguards. The validated uncertainty framework and prioritization matrix provide actionable insights for PPP practitioners, enabling proactive uncertainty management, improved contract design, and enhanced stakeholder management protocols, with demonstrated transferability to other emerging economy PPP contexts.
Nair et al. (Sun,) studied this question.