Research On The Engineering Claim Strategy Considering Corporate Social Responsibility Under The Influence Of COVID-19 Based On Evolutionary Game

At the end of 2019,the outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia rapidly broke out and swept across the country.The domestic outbreak has now been effectively controlled and has entered a normalised phase of outbreak prevention and control,following a community-wide effort to prevent and control the outbreak.The prevention and control measures of the epidemic have had a significant impact on the performance of the construction contract,bringing losses at different levels to all parties involved in the construction of the project,and project claims have been frequent.In order to balance the losses of both contractors and owners,the housing and construction departments of various provinces and municipalities have issued documents to clarify the implementation methods of construction cost adjustment during the epidemic prevention and control period,providing theoretical guidance for claims under the impact of the epidemic,but the relevant basis given for how the costs are to be allocated is still uncertain,with some treating it as force majeure and others saying that reasonable negotiations are conducted.In practice,the costs incurred by the contractor and the owner during the epidemic were often allocated reasonably according to the reality of the situation,and this was easily disputed between the two parties.In this new stage of social development,how a contractor can properly present and successfully claim for compensation in the face of the special policy requirements during the 2019 Coronavirus Disease Epidemic is an issue that requires focused attention.During the claims process,both claimants should not only consider their own economic interests,but also the interests of their stakeholders and overall social values.The fear and anxiety caused globally by the rapid spread of the epidemic has made the role of corporate social responsibility more prominent than ever.Contracting parties should therefore assume appropriate corporate social responsibility in their claims decision-making process,taking into account the needs of a wide range of stakeholders and emphasising their contribution to the environment and to society.Through combing through the existing relevant literature,it is found that most of the current studies are on the premise of complete rationality to study the strategic choices of both contractor and owner in engineering claims,and there is little literature on the consideration of corporate social responsibility in engineering claims.Therefore,this paper combines the bargaining model and evolutionary game to study the claim strategies of finite rational claimants under the condition of information asymmetry.Considering the different strategic choices of the contractor and the owner at different stages of the claim work,this paper analyses the evolutionary game of engineering claims at the negotiation stage and the dispute resolution stage respectively,and quantifies the corporate social responsibility into the game model,analyses the claim decisions and benefits of the contractor and the owner under the circumstances of corporate social responsibility,studies the evolutionary stable equilibrium strategies under different circumstances,and finally explores the influence of corporate social responsibility behaviour on the evolutionary stable equilibrium strategies of both sides of the game through simulation.In this paper,we develop an evolutionary game model for each of the two stages of engineering claims,the negotiation stage and the dispute resolution stage.Firstly,the factors influencing the strategy choice of both parties are determined and the evolutionary game payoff matrix is established;then,based on the respective payment functions of the contractor and the owner,the replication dynamic equations of both parties are calculated respectively,the evolutionary phase diagrams of the strategy choices of both parties are drawn and the optimal strategy choices of both parties are judged;finally,simulation analysis is conducted.In the negotiation stage,the impact of the level of corporate social responsibility of both parties,the probability of a breakdown in negotiations between the two parties and the duration of negotiations between the two parties on the choice of strategy of both parties is considered;in the dispute resolution stage,the legal settlement of claims by the contractor is considered,involving factors such as the probability of success or failure of litigation,the cost of litigation and the discount factor for the cost of claims obtained through negotiation or arbitration.The main research achievements and innovations are as follows:(1)An evolutionary game model of engineering claims was established to obtain the strategy choice tendency of both parties of the game.This paper establishes an evolutionary game model of engineering claims between contractors and owners in two stages of claims work,the negotiation stage and the dispute resolution stage,and introduces corporate social responsibility into the model quantitatively.By analysing the replicated dynamic equations and evolutionary phase diagrams,the optimal strategy choice of both sides of the claim is obtained.(2)When the incentive to fulfil CSR is large enough,the Contractor and the owner are more inclined to negotiate a successful claim.When both sides fulfil their CSR at the same time,both sides will receive certain incentive benefits.If the benefits from fulfilling CSR are large enough to give each other a greater incentive,then both sides are more inclined to contribute to the success of claim negotiations.However,if both sides are unable to achieve higher returns from their CSR performance,and their returns are mainly influenced by the returns from the claim negotiations,then both sides are unwilling to give up their offers for their own benefit,and the claim faces the risk of a breakdown in negotiations,eventually both parties will settle their claims through legal means.(3)If the contractor has a low probability of success in litigation,the contractor is more likely to settle the claim through mediation with the owner.For the owner,a lower success rate for the contractor means a higher success rate for the owner,and the owner will want to reduce its expenses in the claim by litigation.If the contractor wants the owner to engage in pre-trial mediation with itself,then the contractor can improve its own level of corporate social responsibility to bring higher returns to both parties and induce the owner to take a negotiated mediation approach to agree with itself on the cost of the claim.This paper combines project claim with evolutionary game theory,analysis the evolutionary process of engineering claims at different phase of a project,and introduces corporate social responsibility into the game model to explore the impact of corporate social responsibility behavior on both sides of the game,enriching the relevant theories of claims management,providing theoretical guidance on the bargaining strategies of claims between Contractors and owners under the influence of the epidemic,and improving the efficiency of claims.