Abstract Owner’s trust to contractor means the acceptance of transaction risk. The transaction risk can be reduced and their relationship will shift from traditional competition
paradigm to cooperation paradigm only if the black box of trust impacting cooperation is unfolded. Considering that construction project is a temporary social network, this study stands
from the perspective of social exchange. Through a thorough literature review, a conceptual model including initial trust of the owner, perceived justice of the contractor and cooperation
is developed. Then 68 construction projects using governmental financial investment are selected as the research samples to collect 162 valid data samples, and the statistical test is
carried out to test the conceptual model using structural equation modeling. The main findings are as follows: i) initial trust of the owner has a positive role in developing the perceived
justice of the contractor; ii) procedural justice affects distributive justice, and both of them have a stronger impact on cooperation; iii) perceived justice of the contractor has a
partial mediating effect on the relationship between initial trust of the owner and cooperation.
2014, Vol. 11 
