Shaowen Wang

The promotion of the EPC model in public construction projects is a priority for reform in the Chinese construction industry. This study integrates the push–pull–mooring (PPM) model with the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework to explore the influencing factors and action mechanisms of adopting the EPC model of the owners of public construction projects in China. An online questionnaire was sent to public construction project owners who have participated in EPC projects. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyze the survey data. The results identified that the push factors for public construction project owners to the adoption of the EPC model include owners’ management ability, owner’s knowledge about EPC, and the matching degree between the owner’s management philosophy and EPC model; the pull factor is the performance pressure of the project; and the mooring factors include subjective norms, the maturity degree of the EPC, and the support environment. In addition, perceived usefulness, cognitive, and adoption attitude play a mediating role in the relationship between external stimuli and adoption behavior. Overall, this study enhances the understanding of Chinese public project owners’ behavior in adopting the EPC model and provides a theoretical basis for policy recommendations to promote the adoption of the EPC model by public construction project owners in China.

The key to promoting the EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) model in China’s public construction projects is to alter the path dependence of a project owner’s choice of project delivery model (PDM). This study uses evolutionary game theory to discuss the mechanism of government incentives as an external motivation to alter path dependence in the PDM. In addition, a cellular automata simulation to examine the influence of various government incentives on the project owner’s choice. The results show that the combination of subsidies and penalties can produce the best incentive. Subsidies are more effective at promoting PDM institutional change, whereas penalties are more effective at preventing PDM institutional change from anti-recession effects. Based on our results, we propose that the Chinese government should take active subsidy measures at the initial stage of EPC promotion, and adopt a dynamic incentive strategy of continuously reducing subsidies and increasing penalties according to the improvement of the development degree of EPC model.

To promote the EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) model in public projects has become a key task of China’s construction industry reform. However, the behavioral and strategic choices of stakeholders related to the EPC model will affect its stable development. We establish a tripartite evolutionary game model of government-owner-construction company, and analyze the behavioral strategies and influencing factors of these stakeholders in the development of the EPC model based on actual engineering case data. The results show that (ⅰ) there are six evolutionary stable strategies, formed from different combinations of conditions. Among them, the strategy of government incentive, owner choice, and company upgrading qualification is the most suitable for the development of the EPC model in China; (ⅱ) the relevant parameters have threshold effects, which may affect the behavioral strategies of various stakeholders. Therefore, the standards of government incentive policies must be scientific and reasonable. Graphical Abstract