This paper investigates the impact of within-country linguistic diversity on the performance of private participation infrastructure projects. In view of the relevance of language heterogeneity in Asia, we first test a sample of 2921 projects in 7 countries in this region from 1990 to 2013. The findings indicate that higher linguistic diversity is associated with a lower likelihood of project success, and that this negative effect is weakened when the project is greenfield. In contrast, we find no significant effect for projects that include government ownership. Subsequently, we explore the differences between domestic versus foreign projects, as well as a larger sample of countries worldwide. The study contributes to the current debate in the literature by pointing out that within-country linguistic diversity can be a threat to private participation projects, offering useful managerial recommendations on how to reduce this threat.

本文研究了国家内部语言多样性对私人参与基础设施项目绩效的影响。考虑到亚洲语言异质性的相关性，我们首先在1990年至2013年间对该地区7个国家/地区的2921个项目进行了抽样调查。研究结果表明，语言多样性越高，项目成功的可能性就越小，当项目是新建项目时，负面影响会减弱。相比之下，我们发现对于包含政府所有权的项目没有显着影响。随后，我们探索了国内项目与国外项目之间的差异，以及全球范围内更多国家的样本。