Research On Bidding Decision-Making Mechanism Of Construction Projects:From The Perspective Of Risk

Project bidding decision-making in the construction industry directly affects sustainable development of contractor companies.In construction practice,due to the uncertainty and complexity of construction projects and asymmetry of the decision-making information,the contractors are faced with complicated transactional environment when bidding for projects.Research indicates that contractors’ bidding decisions are greatly influenced by project owners’ financial abilities and their reputation.Additionally,safeguarding mechanisms provided by tender documents also significantly affect contractors’ willingness to cooperate.In this research,project owners’ financial abilities,project owners’ reputation and safeguarding mechanisms provided by tender documents are collectively referred to as owner-related factors and are selected as the environmental factors facing the contractors in the bidding stage.Previous research has shown that risk decision behavior is full of uncertainty and subjectivity.The process is largely influenced by awareness and intuitions of decision makers.The social cognitive theory considers that the behavior of a decision maker is influenced by the environment and his/her cognition.Scholars have identified factors that may influence bidding decisions,but failed to investigate how those factors affect the decisions and lacked the consideration of the contractors’ cognitive factors.This makes it difficult to explain and guide the bidding practice.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the bidding decision of project contractors,to explore the integrated influence of owner-related factors and contractors’ cognition on bidding decision-making.Based on the social cognition theory,this research explores the mechanism of owner-related factors to bidding decision-making,and reveals the "black box" of the influencing factors on bidding decision-making.From the perspective of risk decision theory,this research introduces the concepts of risk propensity and risk perception,which are proposed to mediate the process between owners’ relevant factors and bidding decision-making.Moreover,according to the social exchange theory,this research brings in contractors’ trust(including integrity trust,competence trust and intuition trust)as a mediator between owners’ relevant factors and risk propensity and risk perception.The concept of enterprise risk tolerance is introduced as a moderator which plays a moderating role in the relationship between contractors’ risk propensity or risk perception and bidding decision-making.The present research develops a conceptual model and 13 hypotheses based on literature review and theoretical analysis,then collects the data through questionnaires,and finally gets 557 valid questionnaires.In this research,data analysis is carried out by Smart PLS3.0 and SPSS20.0.The results show that the owners’ financial abilities,owners’ reputation and safeguarding mechanisms have positively influence contractors’ bid decisions,and risk propensity and risk perception both have mediating effects in the relationship.The owners’ financial abilities,owners’ reputation,and safeguarding mechanisms have positively influence contractors’ integrity trust,competence trust and intuition trust.Contractors’ trust has a mediating effect between owners’ relevant factors and risk propensity or risk perception.Moreover,enterprise risk tolerance is found to moderate the relationship between risk perception and bid decision-making.The research explores the process of construction bidding decision from the perspective of social cognition and has both theoretical and practical contributions.Theoretically,this research has enriched the knowledge system and scope of the bidding decision theory and clarified the effective boundaries of bidding decision.Simultaneously,based on the risk decision theory and the social exchange theory expanding the research model,the research helps to further understand the bidding process.Practically,this research provides theoretical guidance for contractors’ bidding decisions and helps contractors make sound and appropriate decisions.