Critical Behavioral Risk Factors among Principal Participants in the Chinese Construction Industry

Abstract

The main participants in construction projects are the client, contractors, material suppliers, and consultants such as the project supervisor. They play the most important roles in implementing construction projects, and their behavior has a significant impact on the project’s performance. Because each participant has their own particular interests, by virtue of proprietary information advantage, each individual participant is driven to achieve maximum benefit, which can result in improper behavior with respect to each other. The risk of this resulting in moral hazard and adverse selection based on information asymmetry is called behavioral risk among principal construction participants. Behavior is affected by various risk factors; successful implementation of construction projects depends on effective management of the key risk factors. This paper identifies and ranks the critical behavioral risk factors from the perspective of principal construction participants in the Chinese construction industry. The data used for analysis is based on an interview and questionnaire survey. Factor analysis is conducted with the assistance of SPSS17.0. Forty-one potential behavioral risk factors are identified, with 30 of those being critical, including “client changes project objective or investment direction”, “designer uses technological capability advantage to obtain profit”, and others. These findings contribute to the understanding of risk management in the construction industry in China. They also serve as a useful reference for further studies on the subject.