Impacts of risk allocation on contractors’ opportunistic behavior: The moderating effect of trust and control

Abstract

In construction projects, contractors often exhibit opportunistic behaviors, which harms the project performance, and risk allocation between clients and contractors affects the contractors’ opportunistic behaviors (strong and weak). In this study, a structural equation model was built to explore the impacts of risk allocation on opportunistic behavior and the moderating role of trust and control through an empirical test using a recovery questionnaire with 342 interviewees. The results show that the greater the risk contractors take, the stronger their opportunistic behavior is. Trust has a significant inhibitory effect on both strong and weak opportunistic behaviors caused by risk allocation, while control has a significant inhibitory effect only on strong opportunistic behavior caused by risk allocation. This study enriches the research on the governance mechanism and construction management of opportunistic behaviors and provides management suggestions for risk allocation and control measures of such behaviors.