Government credit risk assessment of non-profit public-private partnership projects in China based on the IVHFSs-IFAHP model

Abstract

To reduce the financial pressure on local governments and improve operational efficiency, the Chinese government has introduced the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model for the development of infrastructure. However, the government credit risk generated by PPP projects may damage private and public interests. Therefore, this study evaluated the government credit risks of non-profit PPP projects by using a systematic and rounded model that employed Interval-Valued Hesitant Fuzzy Sets and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchical Process (IVHFSs-IFAHP). The perspective of the private sector was employed to establish risk index systems using the dimensions of Wuli-Shili-Renli (WSR) methodology. IFAHP was used to collect expert opinions for the comparison of the importance of the indices and establish an intuitionistic fuzzy judgment matrix in order to calculate the weight of each index. IVHFSs were adopted to obtain the scores of the indices coupled with the results acquired by IFAHP to produce comprehensive scores for them. The feasibility and practicability of the proposed method were empirically verified. The results proved the method to be effective for the private sector to evaluate the government credit risks of non-profit PPP projects, providing a reference for participation in such projects.