An Evidence-Based Risk Governance Framework for Public-Private Partnerships in Saudi Arabia: An Uncertainty-Aware Prioritization Framework

Abstract Saudi Arabia’s expanding use of public–private partnerships (PPPs) requires risk priorities that are locally grounded, uncertainty-aware, and operationally actionable. This study developed an auditable evidence-to-governance approach combining literature normalization, stakeholder assessment, quantitative uncertainty analysis, and qualitative contextualization. A 43-source corpus was classified; a 15-source item archive yielded 519 statements, of which 495 were factor-level, 14 contextual, and 10 non-factor-level. Fourteen recurrence-eligible sources supported normalization into 41 factors and selection of 15 risks for a probability–impact questionnaire completed by 205 Saudi PPP stakeholders. Respondent-level probability–impact products were analyzed using Friedman and Holm-adjusted Wilcoxon tests, participant-vector bootstrap resampling, dominance probabilities, tied-rank literature–market alignment, subgroup tests, and sensitivity scenarios. Political and security instability ranked first (CI = 0.5243; 95% bootstrap confidence interval: 0.4835–0.5647), followed by cost escalation and overrun (CI = 0.5173) and coordination and communication failure (CI = 0.5151). Fourteen risks formed the Tier 1 set, while regulatory and legal uncertainty remained Tier 2. Literature recurrence and market criticality showed positive but non-significant alignment (Spearman’s ρ = 0.400; permutation p = 0.1403). Rankings were stable after excluding straightliners and remained highly correlated across prespecified sensitivity scenarios. Open-ended responses yielded 12 themes, including three emergent candidates, which informed proposed controls and key risk indicators without altering quantitative ranks. The resulting Proposed Evidence-Based Saudi PPP Risk Governance Framework links the full risk register to lifecycle ownership, contractual allocation, response controls, monitoring triggers, escalation, and residual-risk review, providing a transparent basis for project-specific governance.