Environmental Impact Assessment Effectiveness in Public–Private Partnerships: Study on the Colombian Toll Road Program

5 Public-private partnership (PPP) has been positioned as a relevant contracting method for developing 6 large-scale infrastructure projects, which entail potentially high-magnitude negative impacts on the 7 environment. The effectiveness of their Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is crucial to 8 achieving sustainable development of these large-scale infrastructure projects. To unravel the drivers 9 for the EIA effectiveness and the multiple combinations built by the complexity of these drivers, this 10 paper analyzes 28 road PPP projects from Colombia employing a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative 11 analysis (fsQCA) approach. This paper decodes conjectural causal links between specific conditions 12 grouped in superordinate clusters (i.e., consultants’ capability, project features, and communities’ 13 participation) and EIA effectiveness dimensions (i.e., normative, procedural, substantive, and 14 transactive). Findings revealed that no single combination of causal conditions ensures 15 multidimensional EIA effectiveness. This study demonstrated that EIA effectiveness relies 16 significantly on the integration of specific features of three external stakeholders: consultants, non17 preferred proponents, and communities. This study constitutes the first empirical multidimensional 18 identification of the combination of conditions that generate EIA effectiveness in road PPPs. 19