The PPP is a new way of public service provision, and in the process of application in China, the distribution of PPP projects shows structural imbalance characteristics, with the number of economic PPP projects significantly more than social PPP projects. Based on the political incentive perspective, this study selects PPP projects initiated by local governments from 2014-2019 in Wind database for empirical analysis to explore the influence of local government performance goals and officials' characteristics on investment preferences of PPP projects at the micro level. The results of the study show that performance goals have a significant negative effect on investment preferences for social PPP projects, and official tenure has a positive relationship with investment preferences for social PPP projects. Official characteristics play a moderating role between performance goals and PPP project investment preferences, i.e., the negative effect of performance goals on social PPP project preferences gradually diminishes as officials' age and tenure increase. This study enriches and expands the research related to how internal and external incentives of officials affect local public service provision, enriching and expanding the research related to how internal and external incentives of officials affect local public service provision, while confirming the limitation of the traditional promotion tournament theory.