Why Social Infrastructure Projects Experience Cost Overrun

Abstract

The infrastructure industry has witnessed incredible growth around the world in the past decade. Large-scale investments have been made by governments in the infrastructure industry as an effective way to stimulate the economy. However, it is worth noting that infrastructure projects worldwide suffer from frequent cases of cost overrun. As a critical challenge in the infrastructure industry, cost overrun remains, however an under-researched academic topic. Previous studies in this field have mainly adopted quantitative methodological research methods and analyzed data from economic infrastructure projects. Social infrastructure projects, however, have received comparatively less academic attention. This study seeks to fill this gap and to analyze the reasons why social infrastructure projects experience cost overrun. Data were collected from four cases of social infrastructure projects in China, and a multiple case-study approach was taken to analyze the data. The findings of the research suggest that, first, the time pressure and changes of orders/scope are the main factors causing the cost overrun in the context of Chinese social infrastructure projects. Moreover, combining the practical cases with existing theorists, it is clear that the evolutional theorist performs better in explaining the cost overrun in the context of Chinese social infrastructure projects comparing to the psycho theorist.