Research On The Evolution And Governance Strategy Of Contractors’ Opportunism Behavior In Engineering Projects

Engineering practices show that opportunistic behaviors of contractors have led to a series of engineering problems including safety and quality accidents,schedule delay and cost overrun,resulting in a bad social image as well as hampering the implementation of project value and the sound growth of construction engineering industry.Therefore,in the field of Engineering practice,it has become a prominent question to make a detailed study of the influencing factors and evolution laws of contractors’ opportunistic behaviors in projects and thus bring out the effective solution of such behaviors.Based on the above,this paper firstly conducts a literature review on the research status of opportunistic behavior,analyzes the complexity mechanism of contractor’s opportunistic behaviors on the basis of complex adaptive theory,relational contract theory and other related theories,and systematically analyzes the influencing factors of contractor’s opportunistic behaviors.On the basis of this analysis,a computational experimental model of contractors’ opportunistic behaviors is constructed,which includes the agent attributes and behavior rules of the owner as well as the contractor.Then the Net Logo experimental tool is used to explore the utility of different agent attributes characteristics and engineering complexity on contractors’ opportunistic behaviors and its evolutionary effect.On these grounds of the experimental results,some theoretical suggestions are provided for the governance of contractors’ opportunistic behaviors.The conclusions are as follows.(1)When owners focus on only one of the factors ranging from price,contractor capability to contractor reputation when selecting contractors,it leads to a larger value of contractors’ preference for opportunistic behaviors.Thereby,the relevant state departments should improve the standardization level of the industry and strictly require the access and permission system,owners should consider the three factors including price,contractor capability level and contractor reputation when selecting contractors so as to effectively reduce the probability of contractors’ opportunistic behavior.(2)Based on different strategies of owners in selecting contractors,the preference value of opportunistic behaviors of contractors is the smallest under the combination strategy of high contract completeness and high supervision.Hence,the relevant national legislature and relevant departments should promptly amend relevant laws and regulations,supplement legal loopholes,and improve relevant construction regulations and regulatory mechanisms,owners should strengthen contract specification management,making the content of engineering contracts more detailed,rigorous and clear.The supervision system should be enhanced and an effective punishment mechanism should also be set up to increase the trigger cost of opportunistic behaviors of contractors so as to effectively curb the opportunistic behavior.(3)The higher the concern of contractors for their reputation,the smaller the value of contractors’ preference for opportunistic behavior.Accordingly,Housing and urban-rural development’s construction industry credit system will make contractors pay more attention to their reputation,and owners should pay more attention to contractors’ reputation,cultivating contractors’ long-term awareness to reduce contractors’ tendency of opportunistic behavior.(4)Comparing the values of the contractors’ opportunistic behavior preference under different project complexity scenarios,the combination of high contract completeness and high degree of supervision strategy has caused the smallest value of the contractors’ opportunistic behavior preference under the scenario of low project complexity.Owners should reasonably design the project objectives and cooperate with contractors with high integrative competence to relieve contractors’ construction pressure,thus avoiding contractors’ opportunistic behaviors to prevent their own interests from being compromised.Secondly,This paper combines the opportunistic behaviors of contractors in engineering project practice with experimental research results in the form of case study to further confirm the application value of the research results and provide some reference significance for curbing and preventing opportunistic behaviors of contractors in engineering projects.This study explores the effects and mechanisms of contractor opportunistic behavior evolution under the influence of different agent behavioral attribute characteristics and engineering complexity,and achieves preliminary results.However,due to subjective and objective reasons,there still exist deficiencies in agent social attribute portrayal,contractual maladjustment,revenue rules and so forth.Based on these deficiencies,the following future prospects are proposed: a further research on how social attributes including agent’ risk preferences and behavioral cognition influence the evolution of contractors’ opportunistic behavior;an in-depth research on the evolution of contractor opportunistic behavior under the influence of owner’s revenue value,relationship cost,regulatory cost,contract formulation cost and so forth.