Mapping the Nexus of Private Public Partnership and Sustainable Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Literature Review and Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Public private partnerships (PPPs) shall have to be encouraged in today’s new phase of socio-economic development and Sustainable Entrepreneurship (SE) is a vital element of it. Researchers and policy makers are realizing the importance of research on PPPs and SE. This study has provided helpful insights by conducting a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review to explore the development, content and future research agenda. In this study, the guidelines used was, “PRISMA” and “The dimensions.ai database” approach. From a total of 118 articles, 35 were initially screened based on the following: “only journal articles”, “between 2015 and 2025”, “open access”, and “keywords”. In the “Biblioshiny.ai with R Studio”, the 35 articles were analyzed. The results showed that there was an evident upsurge of publications in 2021 which reached its peak in 2025. Leading are the “International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences” and “Social Science & Medicine”. “Russia” and “Ukraine” are identified most contributing countries. The keyword analysis and word cloud re-occur the words “Development”, “education”, “economic” and “digital”. Themes emerging from the thematic mapping are: “entrepreneurship”, “sustainability” and “public-private partnerships”, whereas “youth” and “frameworks” are emerging themes to be included. The results briefly summarized the relationship between “PPP” and “SE”, and provided an in-depth description of the history, current status and future trajectories of research on the intersections of “PPP” and “SE”.