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Introduction
Many construction projects can be described as one-off, long-term, highly complex, information asymmetric or as involving asset specificity (Maylor et al., 2008; Chang and Ive, 2007a). These features lead to incomplete or incorrect specifications, owner-initiated specification changes, political processes, etc. (Cox, et al., 1999), and in turn cause disputes to occur frequently (Kumaraswamy, 1997).
Therefore, great effort needs to and has been attached to dispute resolution in the construction project context. Furthermore, engaging in negotiations is regarded as a relatively efficient and costless approach to address project disputes (Ren et al., 2003). Therefore, it is necessary to help negotiators determine how to solve problems cooperatively (Cheung, 1999). From a social psychological view, the knowledge has been accumulated on why negotiators behave cooperatively in negotiations. These researches have mainly been concerned with cognitive framing (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981), motivation structure (Deutsch, 1977), perceived problem solving feasibility (Pruitt, 1983) and attributional perspectives (Shaver, 1985).
Justice is of great importance in that context to produce pro-social motives or motives that reflect concern for others, to perceive the potential for problem solving through increased trust and decreased destructive blame. Its importance for negotiating cooperatively, however, was rarely addressed, especially in construction project dispute negotiations.
Simply, previous studies are not sufficient for the development of justice theory in construction project dispute negotiation. In general, there continue to be serious gaps in the knowledge of linking justice with negotiations in the context of construction project disputes in the following aspects. First, prior research has not elaborately investigated the difference of each dimension of justice on cooperative behaviours, and further, which justice is more functional; and second, when their effects will be amplified or attenuated considering construction project dispute negotiation is closely related with the contract.
Generally speaking, in the literature addressing construction project management, justice or fairness has been regarded as an important factor for success through the entirety of the process. Its importance has been tested in risk or contract evaluation (Bubshait and Almohawis, 1994), tendering (Baba, 1990), contract signing (Carbonara et al., 2014), contract implementation (Zhang and Jia, 2010) or third-party dispute resolution (Cheung et al., 2004). Although, only a limited number of studies (Aibinu et al., 2008; Aibinu et al.,...