Review of studies on the Critical Success Factors for Public–Private Partnership (PPP) projects from 1990 to 2013 Robert Osei-Kyei ⁎ , Albert P.C. Chan Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong Received 18 October 2014; received in revised form 30 December 2014; accepted 13 February 2015 Available online xxxx Abstract The Critical Success Factors for Public–Private Partnership is a major research interest worldwide therefore this paper aims to methodically review studies on the CSFs for implementing PPP from some selected top tier academic journals from 1990 to 2013 (years inclusive). The search results indicated an increased research interest in the exploration of PPP CSFs since 1990. The mostly identified CSFs are risk allocation and sharing, strong private consortium, political support, community/public support and transparent procurement. It was further noticed that Australia, the U.K., China and Hong Kong have been the countries of focus for most research studies on PPP CSFs. Finally the research approaches adopted are case study, questionnaire survey and mixed methods. The findings revealed provide an overview of CSFs for PPPs in order to enhance future implementations. Moreover a checklist of CSFs for PPPs has been developed, which could be adopted for further empirical studies. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved. Keywords: Critical success factors; Public–Private Partnerships; Review; Publications 1. Introduction Following the 2007–2008 global financial crises there has been an increasing interest in the adoption of public–private partnership (PPP) policy by governments in both developed and developing countries. Many governments across the globe are now seeking to tap the private sector's expertise and capital to minimize their infrastructure deficit; in this regard researchers worldwide have also attempted to investigate into the implemen- tation and operations of this sensitive policy (Chan et al., 2010; Cheung et al., 2012; Grimsey and Lewis, 2002). The publications of these researchers have therefore enabled both practitioners and new researchers to gain more insight into the whole concept of PPP policy (Al-Sharif and Kaka, 2004). Given the growing interest in PPP since the late 1990s (Li et al., 2005b), different areas of PPP have been explored and investigated; areas such as risk management (Akintoye et al., 1998; Shen et al., 2006), relationship management (Abdul-Aziz, 2001; Chan et al., 2003; Smyth and Edkins, 2007), financial viabilities (Bakatjan et al., 2003; Wibowo, 2004) and procure- ment (Ng et al., 2007; Ye and Tiong, 2003) have all been extensively explored by researchers worldwide. For the past decades, a major area of PPP studies that has received much attention from researchers is PPP success factors. This was revealed in a review of PPP research trend from 1998 to 2008 by Ke et al. (2009); similarly, Tang et al. (2010) pointed out PPP project success as a major research area which is of interest to researchers. The above indications exhibit how researchers worldwide are interested in exploring the best ways of delivering PPP projects. However, there is no doubt that this area of PPP would continue to be of great interest to researchers in future as PPP market keeps growing and maturing in other jurisdictions and sectors (Chan et al., 2010). Despite the increasing interest in the success factors for PPP projects, the attention given to the need for review and analysis ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: + 852 55454774. E-mail address: oseikyeirobert@yahoo.com (R. Osei-Kyei). www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2015.02.008 0263-7863/00/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: R. Osei-Kyei, A.P.C. Chan, 2015. Review of studies on the Critical Success Factors for Public–Private Partnership (PPP) projects from 1990 to 2013, Int. J. Proj. Manag. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2015.02.008 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect International Journal of Project Management xx (2015) xxx – xxx JPMA-01743; No of Pages 12