Critical Success Factors for Public–Private Partnerships in Urban Regeneration Projects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a well-written paper that I enjoyed reading. The framework is relevant and useful. The paper is well-structured, illustrated, and written. Its relevance to stakeholders involved in PPPs is significant.

Areas for improvement include enhancing the discussion and conclusion section of the paper. This can be achieved by making greater use of the existing literature on PPPs. The authors acknowledge limitations with the way they have identified the literature review. It would be worth it to complement their lit review search by hand to try to capture some additional relevant sources. More significantly, the section between lines 693 and 718 could be enhanced by exploring how the paper's findings contribute to, challenge, confirm or broaden, our current understanding of PPPs. This would help to streamline the paper's argument.

Author Response

Comment 1: This is a well-written paper that I enjoyed reading. The framework is relevant and useful. The paper is well-structured, illustrated, and written. Its relevance to stakeholders involved in PPPs is significant.

Response 1: Thank you very much for your review and your relevant comments, which have definitely helped to improve the study.

 

Comment 2: Areas for improvement include enhancing the discussion and conclusion section of the paper. This can be achieved by making greater use of the existing literature on PPPs.

Response 2: Thank you very much for your comments. The discussion and conclusion section has been improved and detailed, including an analysis of the results obtained compared to other authors. The improvements can be seen in lines 610-666.

 

Comment 3: The authors acknowledge limitations with the way they have identified the literature review. It would be worth it to complement their lit review search by hand to try to capture some additional relevant sources.

Response 3: Thank you very much for your comment. New references were included to increase the comprehensiveness of the study.

 

Comment 4: More significantly, the section between lines 693 and 718 could be enhanced by exploring how the paper's findings contribute to, challenge, confirm or broaden, our current understanding of PPPs. This would help to streamline the paper's argument.

Response 4: Thank you very much for your comments. The discussion and conclusion section has been improved and detailed, including an analysis of the results obtained compared to other authors. The improvements can be seen in lines 610-666.

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study covers an interesting topic that is relevant to both developed and developing countries, and the findings are practical in many ways. However, I’d suggest a few revisions:

1.Although the paper focuses on urban regeneration, there is a lack of detailed description regarding the specific characteristics of urban regeneration PPP projects . It would be helpful to explain how urban regeneration PPPs' CSFs differ from those in other sectors. Adding brief examples of successful or failed urban regeneration PPP projects would also greatly enrich the content.

2.It's important to clearly identify what this paper's core contribution is. It would be beneficial to outline this in the Introduction section to distinguish it from previous research.

3.The current structure places the "Materials and Methods" before the literature review, which is feasible, though it may raise concerns. Specifically, the literture review might be too narrowly focused on success factors of PPPs and could miss broader aspects such as the unique features of urban regeneration projects. Expanding the literature review would provide a stronger contextual foundation.

4.There are too many figures and tables which may distract the reader from the key points. I recommend moving some tables to the appendix (e.g., Table 2, Table 3) or consolidating some of them (e.g., Table 4 to Table 6, Table 10 to Table 12) to maintain focus. 

Author Response

Comment 1: This study covers an interesting topic that is relevant to both developed and developing countries, and the findings are practical in many ways.

Response 1: Thank you very much for your review and your relevant comments, which have definitely helped to improve the study.

 

Comment 2: Although the paper focuses on urban regeneration, there is a lack of detailed description regarding the specific characteristics of urban regeneration PPP projects . It would be helpful to explain how urban regeneration PPPs' CSFs differ from those in other sectors. Adding brief examples of successful or failed urban regeneration PPP projects would also greatly enrich the content.

Response 2: Thank you very much for your comment. New information on PPPs in urban regeneration projects has been included in the document, making the study more complete. The information has been included in lines 40-82.

 

Comment 3: It's important to clearly identify what this paper's core contribution is. It would be beneficial to outline this in the Introduction section to distinguish it from previous research.

Response 3: Thank you very much for your comment. The contribution of the study has been better defined (lines 87-97).

 

Comment 4: The current structure places the "Materials and Methods" before the literature review, which is feasible, though it may raise concerns. Specifically, the literture review might be too narrowly focused on success factors of PPPs and could miss broader aspects such as the unique features of urban regeneration projects. Expanding the literature review would provide a stronger contextual foundation.

Response 4: Thank you very much for your comment. The literature review was maintained after the Materials and Methods section as the CSFs were initially identified from this review. However, new information on PPPs in urban regeneration projects has been added in lines 40-82, making the study more complete.

 

Comment 5: There are too many figures and tables which may distract the reader from the key points. I recommend moving some tables to the appendix (e.g., Table 2, Table 3) or consolidating some of them (e.g., Table 4 to Table 6, Table 10 to Table 12) to maintain focus.

Response 5: Thank you very much for your comment. Tables 2 and 3 have been attached in the appendix and the figures have been consolidated, making the document more understandable.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The reviewer want to thank the authors for conducting this study. This is a literature review and questionnaire survey based paper. this paper may attract readers if the authors addressed the comments provided below: 1) Introduction section is shallow and more details are to be provided. Several paragraphs, line number 125-208 is appropriate to move to the introduction section. 2) Results: in line 132, please explain what do the readers understand by word "infrastructure"? 3)Table 1: Please add one more column to show external and internal factors. Table 2. Table 2 is not critical information the authors are presenting, so, the reviewer strongly suggest to delete the Table 2 and provide the summary of it in a paragraph. 4) line 238, the authors used 0-3 scale, but the authors missed to provide why they used that scale? 5) in lines 237 and 281, the authors used pronouns "we" and "us", it is suggested to use passive voice. 6) lines 341-355, it is suggested to summarize this paragraph in short. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

N/A

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

-The chapter does not include a contextualization of PPPs in Urban Regeneration.  The articles's topic and its relevance are introduced in a very general tone that is not pertinent in an scientific article.  When did PPP started to be used? Why? Where? How have them evolved? and other questions are not addressed. It would be important to amend this.

-Also the CSF framwork is not sufficiently introduced and, particularly, it is not justified why this approach would have provided more relevant results than other potential ones.  Moreover, I do not agree in building the justification of the article on the fact that PPPs in Urban Regeneration have not been analyzed from a CSF lens.  It is a potential approach among many others that authors could have used.  I think that the article is pertinent but the justification for it is related with the relevance of providing further knowledge to the state of the art and the academic discussion on the topic.

-The article explains that to validate the questionnaire, it was presented at a workshop with academic and professional experts, gathering recommendations, etc.  It would be important to know if it was an international or national workshop.  In the second case, for sure, the national tradition on urban policies and governance vould have influenced notably the results biasing them.  This needs to be explained.

-Al so in Part 3.2.1. It would be pertinent to explain how the respondents where identified and how they were contacted to assure that they were experts on PPP in Urban Regeneration.

-Part 3.2.1 needs an introductory paragraph.

-Part 4 should be "discussion and conclusions" to complete the research structure. At the moment the article does not have a part on conclusions.  This Part 4 with the discussion and conclusions should be further developed.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

It is well written in general.  It only needs an overal review to ammend minor mistakes.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

PPP is a widely researched topic, with numerous studies conducted to identify the critical success factors for these projects. Consequently, the authors should have clearly demonstrated the significance of their study and highlighted what sets it apart from previous research. Although there is an attempt to show the rationale, it still needs to be more clearly articulated.

Below are additional comments that still need to be addressed before the paper can be accepted for publication.

1.      Why did the search only use SCOPUS and did not consider other data bases such as web of science, google scholar etc?

2.      How were the respondents sampled?

 

3.      Considering the low response rate of 46% what was the total population and or the basis for distributing 350 questionnaires?

4.      Who were these 350 experts? Were they accounting experts? built environment experts or? Please make it clear to the reader

5. Where was the study conducted? this should have been explained in the methodology

6.      In your literature review section what did you mean by ‘’the period of study’’? it should have been clearly defined which period was this.

7.      There is need for proof reading/language improvement throughout the manuscript example- 

·         Osei-Kyei and Chan [5] ‘’developed a literature review’’- You do not develop literature review, but you conduct a literature review

·    we chose- line 237- Write in third person- (this anomaly needs to be addressed throughout the manuscript)

8. Improve the labelling of Table 1. Simply stating ''factors'' does not convey that they are critical success factors. Ensure this is clearly indicated.

9. To avoid confusion, I suggest separating the literature review section from the empirical findings. Section 3 can include the literature review, while Section 4 can present the empirical results.

10. What are the values on the y-axis in Figures 1-6? Are these the number of respondents, response rates, or the weight of the scale? Clear labelling would have clarified this. However, presenting the results using tables to show the ranking would have been excellent.

11. The methodology section does not explain how the collected data was analyzed

12. The analysis of the presented results lacks rigor. There are no measures for validity and reliability of the data collected, which affects the quality of the findings and their applicability to broader populations.

13. It is not clear how the framework was developed and what type of framework it is.

14. The paper lacks the conclusion section.

 

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language used is satisfactory however, proofreading is necessary to improve the manuscript.