Model for Evaluating the Financial Viability of the BOT Project for Highway Service Areas in South Korea

Evaluating the financial viability of a build-operate-transfer project for highway service areas (HSA BOT project) in South Korea is very important for the private sector because it does not have a risk-allocation agreement with the public sector, such as the minimum revenue guarantee. In this study, a model to evaluate the financial viability of a HSA BOT project is developed based on the discounted cash flow analysis and the real option valuation. The developed model can evaluate the financial viability of the HSA BOT project more robustly and comprehensively than existing methods by considering the characteristics of the HSA BOT project as well as the value of the HSA BOT projects due to the future uncertainty that the existing methods cannot consider. The case study shows that compared to the result from the existing methods, the result from the developed model is close to the actual results of the case project. It is expected that the private sector can use the developed model to determine the investment decision for HSA BOT projects.