Innovative outcome-based contracts called impact bonds have been released to implement solutions that tackle social or environmental issues. We investigated how features of partnership networks determine the performance of impact bonds. We evidenced that projects with partners in less cohesive networks are more successful. We argue that low cohesiveness (which characterizes the presence of structural holes) facilitates the access to unique opportunities, flexibility and the exchange of non-redundant resources, which are appropriate in the context of impact bonds. We tested the hypothesis in a sample of 444 impact bonds released in 81 countries, from 2001 to 2020, using network-, project- and firm-level variables. The results were in line with our conjecture in different settings, indicating that structural holes benefit the establishment and success of impact bonds.
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