Risks Caused by Information Asymmetry in Construction Projects: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The construction industry has a great impact on the environment and, more than ever, bears responsibility for achieving global sustainability goals. Despite the increasing technological development in the industry, information asymmetry between construction project participants affects communication and causes risks that have the potential to seriously harm project goals. The main objective of this systematic review is to collect and analyze existing scientific papers to summarize knowledge on the risks influenced by information asymmetry in construction projects. The established PRISMA 2020 methodology was used to collect and analyze papers from the two largest databases of scientific literature, Web of Science and Scopus. The coding rules were set up to evaluate the 94 articles that were assessed as eligible. Furthermore, the content analysis was applied with a set of coding rules and with the help of the software Mendeley. This study finds that research on risks caused by information asymmetry is still new, limited and not well connected with theoretical concepts. The most common methods used by researchers are simulation and case study. With a thematic analysis of current knowledge, this study provides a synthesis of identified risks, consequences and mitigation measures, as well as directions for future research.