Research on the mobility behaviour of Chinese construction workers based on evolutionary game theory

The Chinese construction industry is characterised by the frequent job changes of lower-level workers, which has been identified as one of the principal causes of poor performance, quality and safety accidents, and high technology loss in the construction industry. Assuming that each party has incomplete market information about the other, we can thus define a dynamic game relationship between employers’ incentives to retain workers and workers’ mobility behaviour. By using evolutionary game theory, in this study we analyse various conditional evolutionary stable strategies and explore how employer behaviour influences the mobility of the workers in this industry in China. The results show that under the prevailing employment model, construction workers are bound to change jobs regardless of whether their employers adopt incentives to retain them or not. This finding suggests that the government, as the market regulator, should reform its employment model to ensure that construction workers switch jobs in an orderly and rational manner.