A Study On The Impact Of Third Party Intervention Threat And Framing Effect On Negotiation In Construction Field

Engineering disputes greatly impact the performance of projects. As theimportant solution to solve disputes, negotiation plays an irreplaceable role inhandling disputes in the process of project. Thus, negotiation is often the first choiceto handle project disputes. Compared with litigation and arbitration provided by thethird party, negotiation can help to handle disputes with minimum cost based onmaintaining the cooperative relation between both parties, as well as effectivelycontrolling the results. The study of negotiation has become hot in the area ofdomestic engineering project.The outcome of negotiation is influenced by many factors, including thenegotiator’s personality, his mastery of the evidence of conflict, his position in theproject, the legal environment, etc. However, besides those factors, the negotiationresult is also significantly influenced by the negotiator’s way of describing disputes,his perception of disputes, as well as accepting the dispute settlement of the thirdparty after the breakdown of negotiations. That lead to the objective of this paper,that is, the negotiation outcome will be influenced by the negotiator’s perception ofdisputes under the involvement of the third party.In order to achieve the research objective, this paper used the experimentalmethod, laid down an experimental scheme, and effectively controlled the framingeffect and the involvement of the third party. In order to measure the experimentalresult, the author designed a questionnaire to evaluate the controlling effect of thosetwo variables, and also ensured the reliability of the result. Later the author invited84professionals from the engineering and construction industries to participate in theexperiment. Thus, through analyzing negotiation behaviors under different framingeffects, this paper reveals the influence of different framing effects on negotiationresults, and has found out the best framing effect which helps improving theintegration of negotiation resultsThe experimental result shows that, during the negotiation of project disputes,when both parties are affected by different frameworks, the negotiation outcomeshows the highest integrity and the lost frame shows a positive effect. On the contrary,when both parties are in the lost frame, the negotiation encounters the highest rate ofbreakdown. The outcome shows the lowest integrity, and the lost frame shows morenegative effect. When both parties are in gain frame, there is a relatively high rate of success, and the negotiation outcome is relatively scattered, with no obviousregularity.