From Contractual Flexibility to Contractor’s Cooperative Behavior in Construction Projects: The Multiple Mediation Effects of Ongoing Trust and Justice Perception

The flexible contract is an important mechanism for owners to govern contractors in construction projects. Given the limited explanatory power of the justice mechanism and the important role of relational factors, this study explored the role of ongoing trust and justice perception in the relationship between contractual flexibility and the contractor’s cooperative behavior and aimed to further reveal the potential influence paths through an empirical analysis. We found the following: (1) apart from justice perception, ongoing trust is another crucial mediation factor in the relationship. (2) Together with the former, ongoing trust plays significantly multiple mediation effects and constitutes the main indirect influence paths, among which the parallel one is strongest and the chain one comes third. (3) Moreover, both factors are more likely to be impacted by contract executing flexibility, compared with contract content flexibility. These findings enrich relational mechanism research and provide some guidance for the owner to build contractual flexibility to govern contractors’ behavior