The Influence Of Behavioral Primers On Subjective Value When Negotiating Construction Claims

Negotiation outcomes include economic outcome and social-psychological outcome. The former outcome has objective value while the latter one has subjective value. Behavioral primers are subconscious frames upon which negotiators prioritize issues, and act as significant factors influencing negotiation outcomes. Although social-psychological outcome represents an important aspect of negotiation performance, most researchers have focused on the relationship between behavioral primers and objective value. In the context of construction claim negotiation, the author found no studies that examine the effect of behavioral primers on subjective value. In addition, existing researches imply that bargaining power may weaken the negative influence under adverse circumstances. Therefore, based on the related theory, this thesis put forwards seven hypotheses about the relationship between negotiating parties' behavioral primers and subjective value, as well as the moderating role of bargaining power on the above-mentioned relationship when negotiating construction claims.In order to test the hypotheses, this thesis conducted a questionnaire survey to collect the required data. The research sample included 226 managerial staff, most of whom came from contracting enterprises and project owners in Mainland China. First of all, after assessing common method bias and reliability, this thesis supported that the Subjective Value Inventory, which was developed in the context of general negotiation, was applicable in construction claim negotiations by confirmatory factor analysis. Second, hierarchical regression analysis was adopted to test the relationship between behavioral primers and subjective value. The results show that 1) both rationality-oriented primer and cooperation-oriented primer produce positive impact on the four underlying sub-constructs of subjective value; 2) task-oriented primer only negatively influences feelings about the negotiation process and the relationship; 3) competition-oriented primer has negative effect on feelings about the instrumental outcome, the negotiation process as well as the relationship; and 4) neither relation-oriented primer nor emotion-oriented primer significantly influences the four underlying sub-constructs of subjective value. Finally, this thesis tested the moderating role of bargaining power by hierarchical regression analysis. The results indicate that, contrary to the hypothesis, bargaining power merely strengthens the task-oriented primer's negative effect on feelings about the self.This thesis chose subjective value instead of objective value as the criteria to evaluate negotiation outcomes. It not only provides a new research direction for the relationship between behavioral primers and outcomes when negotiating construction claims, but also contributes to improving the unbalanced emphasis that researchers have put on subjective and objective values. In order to enhance subjective value, construction practitioners could refer to the research findings and adjust their behavioral primers contingently. For example, this thesis found that rationality-oriented and cooperation-oriented primers are relatively favorable for negotiating parties. Meanwhile, this thesis made some suggestions about primer selection when one party has strong “shadow of the future”, or attaches great importance on one's own objective value or feelings of the self. Moreover, the party could take advantage of the convergence of behavioral primers during the bargaining process to influence the other party's primers, and thus promote the achievement of win-win negotiation outcomes.