Perspective of local government on the performance assessment of district sports and leisure centers

This paper addresses the problem of performance management of operate-transfer (OT) project finance for public sports and leisure centers (SLC) from the perspective of local government. This study contributes to use an evolutionary theory of competitive advantage and mixed-methods, including a modified Delphi method to develop the efficiency-based performance model (EPM) under OT project finance for the public SLCs. The total-factor framework disaggregating the efficiency into an innovative output surplus target ratio (OSTR) provides local governments with a contracted period to manage the SLCs through further specific improvement advice. This study further proposed the four-quadrant matrix formulated by long-term efficiency and short-term profitability to identify the benchmark and improvement directions. The empirical results indicated that there are fifteen SLCs located in the benchmark quadrant. This study provides policy makers in the local governments with a scientific reference to keep or drop the current operating private enterprise in the next concession period. The most underperforming SLCs could follow this proposed quadrant analysis and OSTR index, utilizing their internal resources to develop more attractive and reasonable-price exercise courses for participant growth.